Switches

Brocade to acquire Foundry

Brocade Communications, a data center fibrechannel switch player, is acquiring Foundry, the Ethernet switch company. The deal is likely to meet little resistance from any regulatory or shareholder perspective and so can be considered done.

We believe this move is a step toward recognizing a major truth of enterprise networking, which is that in market cycles driven by IT factors, as this one is, data center switching is the most likely to lead the networking portion of the purchase cycle. In addition, data center products can pull through products elsewhere (which this deal is clearly banking on), while the opposite is not true.

Given the increased influence of IT in overall technology procurement (and the collateral decline of the influence of networking), we believe this to be a very smart move indeed. This acquisition may lead to some additional consolidation in the LAN switching and data center area as other players make counter-moves.

Juniper move signals original processor work?

David Yen, a kingpin in Sun’s revitalized microprocessor program, is leaving Sun for Juniper, where he will be an executive VP of Emerging Technologies, a move that certainly means that Juniper will be doing more original work with microprocessors and/or network processors. There has been a lot of new energy at Juniper in recent months, suggesting that the company is about to make some aggressive moves in the market to sustain its growth and take advantage of loss of market momentum by its mobile-exposed competitors.

Nortel’s Carrier Ethernet perception confused

Nortel, whose performance in the last quarter was significantly below expectations, is pinning a lot of its hopes on grabbing a major share of the Carrier Ethernet market. A major barrier to Nortel’s goals is a lack of company perception on just what that market is, arising out of the same kind of product-group parochialism that we have cited for Alcatel-Lucent. Metro infrastructure is a single strategy, not a combination of three or four technology- and customer-specific approaches, and without that understanding you cannot hope to succeed. With its advanced PBT position, Nortel is well positioned to address this “real” metro market, but as a company its strategies have fallen behind its technologies.

Juniper launches enterprise Ethernet products

Juniper announced its long-awaited EX series of enterprise Ethernet switches, and marketing partnerships with Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. The move to enterprise switching was expected but the partnerships are more a surprise, though how well they will pan out for Juniper is yet to be seen. Juniper lost its COO, Steven Elop, to Microsoft in January, and it may be that there are links between the move and the partnership, though details again are lacking at this point.

Carrier Ethernet creates equipment market shifts

Research is confirming what many have noticed anecdotally: Cisco, Juniper and Nortel are gaining in the carrier router-switch market and Alcatel-Lucent is declining. The shift is likely driven in large part by the shifts toward Carrier Ethernet deployment from traditional routing, a shift that Nortel stands to gain the most from because of PBT. Nortel showed the largest gains, too. Juniper just announced an Ethernet product, and it showed gains as well. Cisco has an Ethernet line and had a strong showing. While Alcatel-Lucent has Ethernet products, it has been submerging them in its IPTV positioning. We believe this shift will not stop at the end of the year, and that it will put the greatest pressure on Alcatel-Lucent. But it will also pressure Juniper since that company has no PBT capability in its Ethernet product. PBT’s features and perceived future value are the real drivers of the change, make no mistake.