ANAHEIM, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 1999--
Industry Leaders Demonstrate Results of Collaboration at VERICON.99
VERITAS(R) Software Corporation (NASDAQ:VRTS), the industry's leading enterprise-class application storage management software provider, and Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (BROCADE(R)) (NASDAQ:BRCD), the leading supplier of Fibre Channel fabric solutions for Storage Area Networking (SAN), today announced a strategic relationship to jointly develop technology for centralized management of SANs. The joint technology relationship is a major step toward cost-effective, centralized SAN management of small- to large-scale SANs, which reduces the total cost of operations in 24x7 e-business environments. VERITAS Software and BROCADE are working together to bring SAN management solutions to market that enable new types of management services, such as the dynamic discovery of SAN components and services in fabric environments. These new solutions will be based on the VERITAS V3(TM) SAN technology, which interoperates with the BROCADE Fabric Operating System (Fabric OS(TM)). In addition, VERITAS V3 SAN Management Tools(TM) will build on the VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer(TM) to further simplify the administration of enterprise storage. The VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer is a new host-based SAN virtualization technology that communicates with Fibre Channel networking products and storage devices to enable new management capabilities, such as the dynamic discovery of SAN components. The VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer presents discovered components to the host applications, with a common client API. The VERITAS V3 SAN technology works in conjunction with the BROCADE Fabric OS, which is a set of management and fabric services offered in the BROCADE SilkWorm Fibre Channel fabric switches to simplify the implementation of enterprise-class SANS. At VERICON.99 this week, BROCADE and VERITAS Software are demonstrating the first phase of this expanded alliance: a SAN management application that provides a single administrative console for zone administration. This application utilizes the discovery services of the VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer, which works in conjunction with the advanced capabilities of the BROCADE Fabric OS. As part of this technology alliance, VERITAS Software will also develop BROCADE-specific additions to the VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer to support the advanced feature set of the BROCADE SilkWorm Fabric Switches. The Companies have agreed to jointly promote and market the VERITAS V3 SAN technology. "With this significant alliance, VERITAS Software and BROCADE are further establishing themselves as the thought leaders in delivering new SAN functionality," said Steve Colman, vice president of worldwide OEM operations, VERITAS Software. "By deploying state-of-the-art SAN solutions engineered by VERITAS Software and BROCADE, customers will be able to evolve first generation SANs into true enterprise SAN installations in support of today's dynamic e-business environment." "As SANs continue to increase in size and complexity, meeting the administration requirements of enterprise multi-switch fabric environments will be essential. The relationship between VERITAS Software and BROCADE will bring new technologies to market to help SAN customers manage SAN resources more efficiently. "The demonstration at VERICON.99 highlights how the virtualization of SAN resources and dynamic discovery of logical and physical network topologies will significantly reduce the administration requirements for enterprise SAN customers," said Peter Tarrant, BROCADE vice president of marketing and business development. The strategic relationship between VERITAS Software and BROCADE is one of the highlighted announcements during VERITAS Software's annual users' conference, VERICON.99, being held this week in Anaheim, Calif.
About the V3 SAN Access Layer and V3 Management Tools
The VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer technology is based on emerging storage networking standards as defined by the standards organizations SNIA, ANSI and IETF. VERITAS Software and BROCADE have both disclosed proposals for discovery service standards to SNIA. In addition, both Companies are emerging as forerunners to help standardize APIs that will simplify SAN management for all vendors, thus enabling integrated customer solutions. Together, BROCADE and VERITAS Software have defined and prototyped an extension to the standard VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer APIs that enables discovery of advanced Fibre Channel switched fabric capabilities such as zoning. As part of this broad alliance, VERITAS Software will also develop vendor-specific additions to the VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer to support the advanced feature set of the BROCADE SilkWorm Fabric switches. To reduce the management challenges found in today's complex SAN installations, VERITAS V3 SAN Management Tools will provide key capabilities in a SAN environment such as discovery and visualization, device status monitoring and centralized zoning configuration and administration. The VERITAS V3 SAN Access Layer will be integrated with existing VERITAS Software products, such as VERITAS Cluster Server(TM), VERITAS Volume Manager(TM), VERITAS NetBackup(TM), as well as new VERITAS V3 Management Tools. BROCADE will provide complementary solutions to facilitate integration of these capabilities into the fabric infrastructure and deliver new fabric management services, including high availability, fault tolerance and policy-based management. |