Gehring Group Uses Brocade

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD - News) today announced that the Gehring Group, a worldwide leading company for honing machines and precision engineering tools, is using a Brocade FAN software solution to more cost-effectively manage its file-based data environment. Brocade File Lifecycle Manager® (FLM) has enabled Gehring to create a tiered storage architecture for its existing Network Appliance file data storage system, greatly simplifying file data management while improving efficiency and reducing costs.

"Gehring first implemented Brocade FLM in 2005, and we found that the product paid for itself after just six months of using it in our environment," said Klaus Fellmeth, head of IT for the Gehring Group. "Without Brocade FLM, the only viable alternatives would have led to significantly greater costs or would have required us to distribute the data over several locations. The Brocade FAN solution also enables us to generate detailed reports about data growth and obtain accurate information regarding how many files have been created, altered, or read and at which times."

Implemented for Gehring by Brocade Partner Stemmer GmbH, Brocade FLM is a cost-effective solution for data classification, file policy management, and archival migration. Gehring is now able to efficiently and easily analyze, classify, organize, and automate the movement of its file data in a tiered storage architecture according to the organization's policies.

"The Brocade FLM policy-based data management software solution automates the lifecycle of files, seamlessly moving files between primary and secondary tiers of storage," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade Vice President of Marketing. "Brocade FLM efficiently utilizes lower-cost secondary storage to improve capacity utilization, which helps reduce hardware and data backup costs. As a result, customers such as Gehring can proactively manage their file data from creation to disposal by automatically aligning storage policies with their business priorities."

Brocade Communications Systems Inc.