Foundry

HP or Juniper to buy Brocade?

A year ago Brocade was a buyer. Now its a seller and HP or Juniper might be buying.

Citing unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Brocade Communications has put itself up for sale. This news comes less than a year after Brocade closed on its own acquisition of Foundry Networks, a $3-billion deal which gave the Fiber Channel storage networking market leader a broad portfolio of high-performance Ethernet switches and a variety of other data center networking products. Brocade has since inked some high profile OEM agreements with companies like IBM, creating a promising sales channel for the Ethernet products.

The Journal reported that HP and Oracle were likely suitors for Brocade. Oracle seems like a strange fit, but HP makes sense, given that Brocade’s former Foundry switches would fill a gap in HP’s ProCurve switching portfolio. ProCurve lacks a track record in high density Ethernet switches, something Foundry specialized in. The deal would also boost its storage business and give HP a much broader overall suite of data center products.

Now Journal blogger Michael Corkery speculates that Juniper might be a buyer for Brocade, too. Known more for its service provider routing business, Juniper recently rolled out its own line of enterprise Ethernet switches, but it has $2 billion in cash. A Brocade acquisition would give Juniper a much more established switching business, plus a lucrative storage networking business with deep and successful partnerships with IBM and EMC.  But Juniper’s stated switching strategy is centered around the concept of having one operating system, JUNOS, across all of its networking products. Buying Brocade would force a complete change in direction.

Brocade continues to exploit friction between Cisco and systems vendors

It’s debatable just how much Cisco’s move into the server market with its launch of the Unified Computing System (UCS) has truly soured the networking giant’s strategic alliances with IBM and Dell, but Brocade has wasted no time in exploiting whatever separation may arise as a result.

Cisco’s UCS strategy banks on the need for tight integration between servers, storage and networks in next-generation data centers, particularly those that use a unified fabric, such as converged Ethernet, to transport all forms of data center traffic on a single medium. Cisco see an opportunity here, believing that many enterprises will want to get all their data center equipment from a single vendor in order to build such a highly-integrated infrastructure.

Of course, as part of its plan to exploit this potential market, Cisco has introduced its own line of servers, putting it into direct competition with long time allies in the data center, such as Dell, HP and IBM.

Whatever rift that forms between Cisco and these server vendors is an opportunity for Cisco’s networking competitors.

In the year since the storage networking company Brocade bought Foundry Networks, it has been leveraging its existing partnerships with leading IT equipment vendors to expand the market for its newly acquired Ethernet switching business. Apparently vendors like IBM and Dell are only too eager to find an alternative networking partner.

Earlier this year IBM announced a major expansion to its OEM relationship with Brocade. Big Blue had been selling IBM-branded storage networking gear from Brocade for several years, but in the new deal it expanded that OEM relationship to include a broad range of former Foundry switches and routers.

And now yesterday Dell announced that it is expanding its own OEM relationship with Brocade, from a storage networking channel to a broad line of Brocade’s Ethernet products.

Dell also announced it would start reselling products from IT automation vendor Scalent Systems. This is all part of an “Efficient Enterprise” offering Dell plans to unload on the market toward the end of 2009. As a result of these new OEM deals, Dell can now offer enterprises servers, storage, networks and IT automation software in one deal, enabling enterprises to buy an integrated data center solution from one vendor. IBM is making a similar move with its OEM agreements and its consulting arm. HP is moving swiftly in this direction, too, but it has the advantage of possessing its own, rapidly growing network equipment division in ProCurve.

Shocker! Cisco leads the pack in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for enterprise LAN

When I saw that Gartner had published a new Magic Quadrant for enterprise local area network (LAN) infrastructure, I knew one thing was for certain. Cisco Systems would be THE leader in the market. The only question was for me was - how would the rest of the market shake out?

In this blog post I’ll review this year’s Magic Quadrant for the LAN market, and I’ll compare it to last year’s Magic Quadrant for Campus LAN infrastructure, which is essentially a measure of the same market.

As I wrote above, Cisco is THE leader in the LAN market, scoring high in both of Gartner’s criteria for the quadrant: completeness of vision and ability to execute.  In their assessment of Cisco’’s position, analysts Mark Fabbi and Tim Zimmerrman noted that Cisco maintains the broadest portfolio of LAN switching and WLAN technology on the market. The introduction of its Nexus switches have shown that Cisco is providing some leadership in addressing emerging connectivity demands in data centers.

However, Gartner cautioned that Cisco remains the high-priced vendor, with some workgroup switching products being twice as much as alternative products on the market. Gartner also said Cisco might be taking its customers for granted, especially those customers who believe in buying networking gear from more than one vendor. The analysts wrote:

We are hearing increasing concerns about Cisco’s presales organization taking customers for granted, and not providing expected levels of service, especially for customers that have not endorsed an end-to-end Cisco solution.

The only other leader in this Magic Quadrant is HP ProCurve, which was a leader last year as well.  Gartner described ProCurve as the fasted growing LAN switch vendor during the past two years and when clients speak with Gartner about their shortlists for vendors, ProCurve is the the second-most-asked-about vendor after Cisco. Gartner praised ProCurve’s integration into HP’s Technology Services group, which gives it access to HP’s broader sales force. It also praised ProCurve’s low cost of ownership and the successful integration of the WLAN technology it acquired with Colubris Networks.

But Gartner cautioned that ProCurve still lacks high-end core switches (An acquisition of a high end core switching vendor like Arista Networks or Blade Network Technologies would do the trick!). The company also needs to expand its channel for larger sales opportunities. ProCurve has in the past been known as a good vendor for SMBs.

A third leader from last year’s campus LAN Magic Quadrant fell down a notch in this year’s quadrant. Foundry Networks, now known as Brocade, the storage networking company that bought Foundry last year, was classified as a visionary in this year’s Quadrant, scoring high on its completeness of vision but scoring a little lower than last year in its ability to execute.

Gartner praised Brocade’s integration of Foundry but said Foundry lost momentum last year due to its U.S.-centric and data-center-centric sales focus. Gartner said it wants to see market evidence that Brocade’s integration of Foundry is successful and that Brocade can regain market momentum.  I have no doubt that last week’s announcement of a new Ethernet switching OEM agreement between IBM and Brocade will go a long way toward helping Brocade regain some of that lost momentum that Gartner is looking for.

Gartner identified three other visionaries in this year’s Quadrant: 3Com, Enterasys/Siemens and Extreme Networks.

Last year Gartner classified 3Com as a niche player, but it elevated the vendor to a visionary in this year’s Quadrant, giving it higher marks for its completeness of vision. Gartner praised 3Com’s revamped product lines and its growing market share in China and other emerging markets. H3C, 3Com’s Chinese subsidiary, has a 35% market share in China, for instance. And 3Com has a very large, low-cost R&D workforce in China. 3Com recently told me H3C has 2,300 engineers in China.  But Gartner cautioned that 3Com and H3C have been, until recently, run as two separate companies. It will be important for the two to integrate. Also, 3Com has very little market penetration outside of Asia. Gartner warned that taking products developed for China and selling them globally will be a challenge.

Enterasys, which merged with Siemens Enterprise Communications last year as part of a Gores Group acquisition, maintained last year’s position as a visionary. It drew praise from Gartner for it full complement of products from the data center to the access layer, its tightly integrated security technology, and good customer buzz around support and services. But Gartner said Enterasys’s market footprint remains small and its distribution channel is limited. Marketing has also been weak, Gartner said, as the market waits for the new combined company Enterasys/Siemens to change its name.

Extreme Networks, the third visionary in the Quadrant, drew praise for broadening its XOS-based switch line and its policy-based configuration and open architecture. But Gartner noted that Extreme is struggling to maintain revenue and it remains one of the smallest vendors in the market. Gartner also cited some support issues affecting the company’s install base.

Gartner identified two niche players in this year’s Magic Quadrant. First there is Nortel, which was downgraded from its visionary status in last year’s Quadrant. Gartner cited Nortel’s bankruptcy as an impediment to the company competing for new business. Gartner is predicting significant loss of market share and revenue for the company as it remains in bankruptcy. Gartner also said Nortel needs a new core switching platform.

The second visionary, Alcatel-Lucent, drew praise for a solid product strategy and its growing market share and revenue; however, Gartner said the company needs to invest more in R&D to keep pace with the latest innovations in data center switching and wireless LAN technology.

Force10 Networks, which was identified as a niche player last year, was dropped altogether from this year’s Magic Quadrant because it no longer meets Gartner’s revenue requirements for inclusion, whch is 1% of ports sold overall or 5% of ports sold in a specific market segment.

Gartner also noted that Juniper Networks has entered the Ethernet switch market, but it hasn’t earned enough of a revenue share to be included in this year’s Magic Quadrant. Juniper’s switches earned the company $56 million in 2008.

So there you have it, for what it’s worth. Cisco remains on top, but the other players in the market continue to make moves. ProCurve and 3Com are on the rise. Nortel and Force10 are in decline. Everyone else is looking to take a step forward.

Brocade layoffs hit Fibre Channel business

Dan Raffo, over at our sister blog Storage Soup, reports that Brocade is cutting between 5% and 10% of its workforce today. Sources told Dan that the job cuts will come mostly from the storage side of the business rather than on the IP networking side, which made a big splash this week when IBM and Brocade announced that IBM would OEM Brocade’s Ethernet products. This is the first series of layoffs reported at Brocade since the storage networking vendor bought Foundry Networks last year.

What is Brocade doing at VoiceCon?

As I was walking the floor of VoiceCon’s exhibition hall today I noticed that Brocade had a rather large booth at the show, with quite a few sales guys patrolling the perimeter.

And I didn’t see the word Foundry anywhere.

I asked one Brocade rep what a company known best for its storage networking products was doing at VoiceCon. He explained that Brocade was in town to promote Foundry switches as a platform for supporting IP telephony.  Brocade bought Foundry last year and Foundry has had booth presence at VoiceCon in the past.

But there’s no trace of the Foundry brand at the booth. Just Brocade. It looks like I’ll have to stop referring to them as Brocade/Foundry. The Brocade rep said all Foundry products will be branded as Brocade switches for now on.

I haven’t heard much from Brocade since it bought Foundry, and I’ve been wondering about how the merger has been going. It looks like it’s moving forward with a single Brocade brand, so customers better get used to referring to their Foundry switches and load balancers, etc., as Brocade boxes.

California dreaming: Cisco’s rivals have their say about Unified Computing

Yesterday was Cisco’s big day. The networking behemoth ended months of speculation about its move into the server market by unveiling its Unified Computing System, codenamed “California.” As I sat through yesterday’s video conference helmed by Cisco CEO John Chambers, I kept waiting for the nitty-gritty details of the technology the company is introducing. Instead, I heard more than 90 minutes of chatter among Cisco executives and leaders from partners like VMware, EMC, BMC, Accenture and Microsoft about how well all these companies were working together to execute Cisco’s vision. I was a little disappointed. The conference was much more conceptual than technical, and I think that’s the way Cisco wanted the day to go. Cisco PR folks blitzed editors and analysts with fact sheets and press releases during and after the event, and there is a lot of meat in there. It just takes a while to read through it all.

Cisco’s rivals, particularly its rivals in the networking market, are eager to offer their opinions on what Cisco is trying to do. Michael Morisy will take a deeper look into that with a story on SearchNetworking.com tomorrow. In the meantime, here’s some of the feedback I’ve received from them over the last 24 hours.

Juniper

First up is Mike Banic, Juniper’s vice president of product marketing for Ethernet platforms. He notes that Cisco’s event was more conceptual than technical because Cisco may have been forced to unveil this project a little early.

There was a rumor that this event was happening a lot earlier than [Cisco] had planned because of the article in the Wall Street Journal on California. It looks like that reporter had a lot of good facts. So they moved this up because they didn’t expect anybody to get these details and they needed to slowly unfurl the story. They’d rather be telling this story when they have more details to share. i don’t think they’re really there. If they wante dto show us how they coulud simplify management [of the data center], they would demonstrate that. Otherwise, it’s just words.

Banic offered a contrast between Cisco’s approach and Juniper’s approach to simplifying management of data centers.

[Cisco is] not suggesting anything new here. Simplified management of compute resources and networks is something vendors in this market have been doing for awhile, like HP and IBM and newer entrants like VMware. For us, it’s very different from our strategy. We’ve focused on being network pure-play. The network is our strength. We’re not going to wander into knew worlds like servers. We’re focusing on connections. [Cisco] is going to perpetuate the multi-layer network model, whereas the Juniper vision is to have the whole data center network look like one switch. It will be multiple switches, but it will all look like one switch [in the management console]. We already have something like that with our virtual chassis switch. We can build a single logical switch for the data center. That’s what Project Stratus is.

Banic also noted that Cisco’s entry into the server market will further drive a wedge between it and traditional server manufacturers like IBM and HP, which Cisco has partnered with in the past. “Those vendors are in a better position and have more expertise and history with servers than we as a networking vendor. And we’re in a better position to work with those partners, like IBM.”

Brocade/Foundry

Brocade has been positioning itself to become a player in the data center networking market, particularly through its acquisition of Foundry Networks.  Elizabeth Walther, Brocade’s senior public relations manager, offered me the following observations:

• Cisco’s approach to Unified Computing is not revolutionary. Many companies with extensive experience in solving complex data center issues are already working on solutions
• Cisco’s approach is likely to be very capital intensive up front, which will be a major obstacle in light of today’s global economy.
• The challenge at hand — the evolution of the data center to a dynamic, fully virtualized state — is extremely complex and should leverage open architectures and industry standards.

Her second point, that it might be expensive, is a valid point. But I think companies that are looking to transform their data centers in this way know that they will have to lay down money to do it. Also, Cisco isn’t expecting broad adoption of this technology until four or five years out. By then (we hope) the economy should be rebounding.

Brocade is arguing that, despite Cisco’s talk about using open industry standards in Unified Computing, the initiative will still involve too much proprietary technology. Brocade offered this official statement, which expands on that point:

A dynamic and virtualized data center holds the promise of many compelling benefits for end-users including increased server utilization, decrease in power footprint and more efficient operations in general. However, achieving this goal is a complex challenge that can be best tackled by a broad ecosystem of industry partners and not based on a proprietary, singular architecture of one company.

In contrast, Brocade is already helping customers address these challenges by integrating our networking solutions with a range of mature computing, management and storage technologies from some of the strongest companies in the world. These partnerships are leveraging open interfaces/standards, co-developed technology, and products that are available today, which will lower costs and maximize return on investment for customers.

Blade Network Technologies

Blade CEO Vikram Mehta echoed Brocade’s position on Cisco’s ideas of industry standards will lock customers into a “proprietary world” while locking out vendors like HP and IBM that are “trusted open systems suppliers.” He said the standards in Unified Computing are tantamount too “standards with a C” as in Cisco.

Methta trashed Cisco’s announcement in his own blog with 10 reasons why Cisco’s Unified Computing won’t fly. Here are three of them.

• Unified Computing means standards with a “C.” According to Cisco, converged data and storage networking requires Cisco’s Data Center Ethernet (DCE), thus eliminating freedom of choice with a sole-source Cisco-only server and network. This puts at risk integration and interoperability with vast existing installations. The rest of the industry is working on an open approached called Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) using IEEE’s Data Center Bridging (DCB) standards.
• It’s more about packaging than true innovation. For example, Cisco’s fabric extenders carry the same cost structure as switches, as they utilize similar switching silicon, physical interface components, and management processors. When compared to traditional switches – sharing management via “stacking” – the fabric extenders are another example of packaging, not innovation. The more costly data center infrastructure components – CPUs, RAM, and networking silicon – remain unchanged, except Cisco’s prices are higher and – surprise, surprise – more Cisco gear is needed to control them.
• Follow the money – into Cisco’s bank account. Cisco’s “California” server approach requires Cisco’s Nexus 5000 switches that start at $17K for a bare-bones Layer 2 switch and significant premiums for adding Layer 3 and FCoE functionality, so the total cost of ownership will be similar to the cost of living in California.

I should note that Cisco said Unfied Computing does not require investment in Nexus switches. Cisco executives told me the uplinks from a Unfied Computing System can plug into any vendors switches. Of course, customers will get the best performance out of the system by plugging it into Nexus switches, which offer the “unified fabric” technology that Cisco is promoting with Unified Computing.

As I receive more input from Cisco rivals, I will post updates here.

A Shot at Love with Juniper Networks?

When it comes to enterprise Wi-Fi, the industry’s got enough drama for an MTV reality series, with constant bickering over what WLAN architecture’s better, or which .11n product truly supports PoE, or which skeezy AP went home with a stranger last night.

All this is to say it’s not surprising there’s a lot of back and forth about a rumored Juniper acquisition of Aruba or Meru. Mergermarket.com reported that two analysts and another source think a Juniper purchase is looming, and these two are the likely targets.

Chris Silva, Forrester analyst, had his own theory: Juniper, indeed, was ready to bite, but Aruba is too expensive and Meru might be too weird:

So, there it is, I’m drawing a line in the sand that the acquisition target is not Aruba, perhaps Meru and potentially another, even smaller vendor. Nothing short of hedging on my part, I suppose, but I will say this: WLAN is a logical line extension for Juniper, and I’m not ruling out - but rather expecting - at least one more acuqisition before the year is out.

We followed up with Chris to name names, and he kindly got back to us.

“It’s a tough call,” he e-mailed. “Bluesocket seems to be one of the last men standing. Aerohive is too small and too new and Extricom, while likely a cheaper buy than Meru, is the same technology without the customer list.”

Aruba, however, doesn’t seem to be sitting at home waiting for Juniper’s phone call. They’ve teamed up with Foundry to form a “co-marketing relationship between the companies’ wired and wireless LAN products for Federal customers.” A small step for LAN, to be sure, but maybe signaling a future giant leap (acquisition?) for LAN-kind?

Straight from Aruba’s announcement of the “relationship”:

“This collaboration affords Aruba and Foundry the opportunity to target a sizable Federal market in need of new and replacement secure networking infrastructure,” said Keerti Melkote, Aruba’s co-founder and chief technology officer. “We have steadily enhanced our suite of wired products, including wired remote networking technology, to complement our industry-leading wireless LANs. As Foundry’s first wireless LAN vendor to be designated an Ironpowered Technology Partner, we’re now in a unique position to co-market our products, together with Foundry switches and routers, across a broad range of Federal applications.”

Sounds awfully cuddly to me.

Brocade grabs Foundry Networks, challenges Cisco in the data center

There’s one vendor out there who is poised to challenge Cisco Systems’ dominance in the data center networking market. No, it’s not Juniper with its new line of EX switches. ProCurve Networking by HP is strong, but it doesn’t have the high-end core switches that Cisco can now boast with its Nexus family of switches.

No, the real challenger to Cisco might just be a storage networking vendor: Brocade.

Brocade announced Monday night that it has reached an agreement to buy Foundry Networks for $3 billion. The new company formed by this merger will feature Brocade’s industry leading storage networking technology and Foundry’s line of high-end service provider and enterprise class data center network switching technologies.

Brocade had already signaled its intention to challenge Cisco in the data center when it unveiled its new DCX Backbone switch last January. This chassis-based switch supports 8 Gbps Fibre Channel and emerging converged Ethernet technology. Also known as data center Ethernet, converged Ethernet holds the potential to carry all forms of data center traffic on one fabric. Instead of having separate networks for storage and for servers, companies can have one unified fabric and one set of network devices to provide connectivity in their data centers. Several standards must be ratified before this technology becomes widely available to the market, but Brocade isn’t the only vendor to invest in it early. Cisco’s new Nexus switches also support converged Ethernet. Both Cisco and Brocade have signaled that this technology is the future of data center networking.

But Brocade’s expertise and breadth of offerings in Ethernet technology doesn’t extend very far beyond it’s DCX product. That’s where Foundry comes in. Established in 1996, Foundry has a reputation for building high-density core data center switches favored by very large enterprises, service providers and Internet-class companies. Foundry lists companies such as AT&T, Google, Yahoo, Apple, Discover, Citigroup, Wachovia, AOL, Ticketmaster, MorganStanley and the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as its customers.

With the Ethernet switching expertise of Foundry, Brocade now appears ready to stake out a solid number two position in the data center networking market. A lot will depend on how well Brocade absorbs Foundry. That will take some time. Cisco isn’t exactly shaking in its boots today, but it will have to stay on its toes.