One factor that's helped to shift market shares has been 4-Gbit/s functionality. As McData CFO Scott Berman admitted last week, McData got hurt by being slow to adopt 4-Gbit/s technology. (See McData Post-Mortem.) Brocade was a distant third in the director market with 25.8 percent share before it began selling 4-Gbit/s directors in the third quarter of 2005. Cisco's jump to first came after it introduced 4-Gbit/s cards for its directors, including a new 528-port chassis.(See Cisco Goes 4-Gig & Big.)
For the overall 4-Gbit/s director market, Brocade still had 60.1 percent market share last quarter with Cisco charging hard at 23.5 percent and McData at 16.3 percent, according to Dell'Oro.
"Four-gig was propelling Brocade's growth over the last three quarters, and now Cisco's giving them a run for their money," Dell'Oro says.
Despite Cisco's gains, it still has a way to go to replace Brocade as the Fibre Channel switch leader. Brocade led the overall Fibre Channel switch market in the second quarter with 42.8 percent share compared to McData's 29.7 percent and Cisco's 21.9 percent. Adding McData's revenue for the quarter would give Brocade a combined 72.5 percent share of the overall market and 66.2 percent share of the director market.
And Brocade has gained more ground in the director market over the past year than Cisco, increasing $29.3 million compared to Cisco's $22.1 million gain. McData's revenue stayed flat over that period.
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