Classic Reyes. Still talking out of both sides of his mouth.
How can a switch vendor even pretend to be a trusted partner of the OEMs when it doesn't even want to be interoperable?
This pig is officially earmarked for our summer luau. Fatten her up, boys and girls.<g>
.....Brocade has been considering scenarios in which it will increasingly compete with companies that have been its traditional partners. In fact, according to a Brocade insider who wished to remain anonymous, CEO Greg Reyes recently addressed the troops on this point: "The OEMs don't want us to build [a virtualization switch], but Greg said, 'We're going to f---ing build it anyway.' "
Sources: Brocade to Buy Rhapsody
byteandswitch.com
............. "That’s why Brocade had to take this step, because OEM makers are looking for a trusted partner," Reyes said. He did not explain why OEMs should trust Brocade but not Cisco, but he labored the point. "We’re committed to being the trusted OEM provider of fabric application platforms," he also said during the call.
Brocade Buys Rhapsody, Braves OEM Wrath
computerwire.com
"Brocade would have to do things to its switch to make it interoperate with eveyone else, but it chose not to," said Jonathan Donaldson, technical marketing engineer at Cisco, adding, "There’s not much traffic going over the Brocade SAN, as the primary one is doing just fine." Brocade representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Cisco experienced Brocade's interoperability tactics firsthand when it realized the company was only interested in helping Cisco build products that would connect exclusively to Brocade switches. Needless to say, that partnership ended in tears (see Cisco and Brocade: This Means War).
Storage OEMs Warm Up to Cisco
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So would EMC consider acquiring switching technology, à la Sun Microsystems Inc. buying Pirus Networks Inc.? (See Sun Beams on Pirus.)
No, Lewis says: "I don't see the value of getting into the hardware business with a special-purpose box."
EMC's goal will be to layer software on top of those environments. "We view this as a software play," he says. That sounds very much like the strategy of Veritas Software Corp. which rolled out the "Veritas Powered" program earlier this year. The company is working with Cisco Systems Inc., Rhapsody Networks, and others to embed Veritas's volume management software on their switches (see Veritas Puckers Up for Cisco).
EMC, it turns out, is also "working with everyone who is building an intelligent switch," Lewis says. The difference between Veritas's and EMC's approaches is that "we're not getting the marketing out ahead of the development process."
Vendors in the intelligent SAN switch space include Cisco (via Andiamo Systems Inc.), Brocade Communications Systems Inc., Rhapsody, Candera Inc. (formerly Confluence Networks), Maranti Networks, and Sanera Systems Inc.
Lewis says that as features like intelligent routing and provisioning become part of the network infrastructure, the most important factor is that the switches remain open and interoperable. "We believe that it has to evolve in a standard way so you don't break the existing infrastructure," he says. "You can't have a switch that supports EMC and HDS suddenly not support HDS."
EMC and HDS CTOs: What's Next
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