Good for a few yuks. Thanks to my broker, Mr. P. and the fibre channel thread on Yahoo!
[B] JONAS ON NETWORKING: Ancor forces Brocade's hand --
By Gabrielle Jonas, BridgeNews
New York--June 22--Poor Brocade. The switching company received a slap on
the wrist Thursday when Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, said Brocade
shouldn't take credit for creating an open standard for its fiber channel
technology. Kumar argued Brocade was really throwing in the towel after
arch-rival Ancor "reverse-engineered" Brocade's Fabric Shortest Path First
(FSPF) technology.
* * *
What is "reverse engineering"? It's a practice whereby one company unravels
the trade secret of another company by looking at the product and figuring out
how it was made.
That woman who made a name for herself in the 1980s who bought beloved food
products whipped up under trade secrets, such as Twinkies, brought them to a
lab, had the ingredients broken down, and then copied them in a cookbook, was
practicing reverse engineering.
That's what Ancor, which has a teeny piece of the switching market, did
recently with Brocade's FSPF technology. However, there's a question as to
whether Brocade's version is itself original. "FSPF is a derivative of the OSPF
routing algorithm used in IP networks," Kumar said. "Brocade made minor
alterations and attempted to implement it as a proprietary routing protocol."
And, Ancor, who is hungrily eyeing Brocade's lion's share of the fiber
market--Brocade has 90% of the fabric channel fabric switch market and 55% of
the switching mark
et overall--claims it didn't decode Brocade's switching technology for its own
purposes, but for the greater good of the industry.
That's not quite true. It was in part for its own good, and in part to
embarrass Brocade.
In an effort to take the teeth out of this proprietary protocol, Ancor
reverse-engineered FSPF with a great deal of ease--enough to make Brocade blush.
"Considering the speed of which Ancor did this work, it was obvious that
FSPF presented no barrier to entry for Ancor, or anybody else for that matter,"
Kumar said.
As a result, on Wednesday, with Brocade's blessing, the fiber channel
standards work group FC-SW-2, announced that earlier in the month it unanimously
voted on one inter-switch routing protocol proposal to be submitted ultimately
as a standard by the American National Standards Institute.
The FC-SW-2 workgroup includes the primary Fibre Channel Switch suppliers:
Ancor Communications, Inc., Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., privately held
Gadzoox Networks, Inc., McDATA Corporation (which is EMC majority-owned) and
privately-held Vixel Corporation.
"It was a good "save" by Brocade,because it allowed Brocade to make brownie
points as a standard leader, when there was not that much development and no way
to protect it," Kumar said.
Nelson also successfully got others involved in the battle.
"We didn't put direct pressure on Brocade," Nelson said. "We asked customers
to put pressure on them. We firmly believe they were hurting the market by not
having the inter-operability in the market they should have had."
But, he told BridgeNews, he has every intention of making use of the
standard to achieve switch compatibility with Brocade.
"Now that Brocade has consented to the standards, we are now free to use the
interface without any problem at all," Nelson said. "They advertised that
interface as an industry standard, but they weren't telling the rest of the
world what their messages were.
Okay. So Brocade fibs and says it's being generous, when in fact Ancor
forced its hand. But shouldn't Kumar's ire really be directed at Ancor, instead
of Brocade? After all, that's the company that engaged in "reverse-engineering."
At the heart of the issue is the tension between a vendor's right to have
proprietary products, which, without competing products, translates into high
margins, and inter-operability--allowing these products to work with other
vendors' products. This makes the product appealing to carriers who want the
option to mix and match different products, such as switches and routers, from
different vendors.
"What they were doing was a serious disservice to the marketplace," Nelson
said. " If one vendor controls the market, it cripples it a bit. This'll be very
good for Brocade, because it makes the pie even bigger if their percentage
reduces."
Brocade's CEO was not pleased.
"It is interesting the one guy who[se company] has an investment banking
relationship with Ancor and has a buy all the way down on the stock, is
constantly bashing Brocade," Gregory Reyes, president and CEO of Brocade told
BridgeNews, in an exclusive interview. "Since initiating coverage with our
company, Kumar's never met with us. The note Friday is an Ancor sales pitch.
Every chance he gets he throws stones at the company."
Piper Jaffray makes a market in Brocade as well as Ancor.
Added Reyes, "Brocade's got a track record of performance and [Piper
Jaffray's] banking relationship with Ancor needs to be seen for what it is: a
financial relationship that is highly suspect. It's kind of tragic Kumar tries
to pooh-pooh a company like Brocade that had done so much for standards and
inter-operability. I can think of anything that Ancor has contributed to any
standards body. "
Ancor had nothing to do with Brocade making its protocol accessible, he
said.
"For them to say they forced our hands, is an absurd notion--it's asinine.
It's mind-numbing," Reyes said. "It's so amazing. It's like the mouse that
roared: Ashok Kumar from Piper Jaffray: He threw a stone heard around the
world."
His ire didn't end there. He doubted whether Ancor being able to use
Brocade's switching protocol would make any difference for Ancor.
"They have a hard enough time hooking their own switches together and making
them work, let alone figuring out how to hook them up ours," Reyes said.
According to Reyes, market share has the final word on the subject.
"We're an industry leader, we're hitting our targets; we're a standards
leader. "We've consistently beating analyst estimates, and we've got the
broadest customer base. Recently, we procured a strategic partnership with
Cisco. At the end of the day, whether Ancor reversed-engineered our routing
algorithm or not is a side-show. I think Ancor's financial performance speaks
for itself." end
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