Brocade Targets Small and Midsized Businesses

   Brocade Communications Systems, which provides infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), has announced a new strategy to target first-time SAN users in small to midsized businesses (SMBs) as well as enterprise departments and remote offices. As part of the strategy, Brocade will release new OEM products that are designed to reduce the cost of SANs. Brocade partners, including HP, IBM, StorageTek, and Sun Microsystems, will include the new products as part of SAN offerings. "Until now, most SMBs, as well as branch offices at large enterprises, couldn't take advantage of SANs to boost utilization, availability, and manageability due to high costs and complexity. Our latest research indicates that in 2003 the majority of low-cost servers were not shipped as SAN-ready. Initiatives from SAN vendors such as Brocade that meet the cost and usability needs of SMBs will boost IT managers' ability to manage all storage assets and play a critical role in the continued growth of the networked storage industry," said Richard Villars, vice president, storage systems research, at IDC.
   Brocade will release a new family of 8-port and 16-port Brocade SilkWorm switches for SANs. The switches feature a shared system architecture, compatibility with Brocade's other SAN platforms, and multiple-feature options depending on specific customer configuration needs.