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Brocade Late to SAN Extension Ball: Page 2 of 4

To help round out its offerings, Brocade has also cut a deal with CNT (Nasdaq: CMNT) to recommend CNT's UltraNet Edge router as the "preferred" way to extend Brocade SANs over IP.

But wait -- why would a customer use Brocade's own FCIP option, then?

"Our implementation of FCIP will be used in campus environments, but we anticipate that if someone is building a high-end disaster recovery solution -- with very high bandwidth -- they'll opt for the 'Cadillac' CNT model," says Kidd.

CNT and Brocade say more than 300 mutual customers of CNT and Brocade are already using the two companies' products together. Earlier this week, CNT launched the UltraNet Edge 3000 storage router, which it says boosts performance and adds support for 2-Gbit/s FC, Ficon, and multipoint FC routing (see CNT Charges Back to the Edge).

Ed Walsh, VP of marketing and business development at CNT, notes that the reseller arrangement with Brocade is an exclusive, three-year deal. "They can't do this with any of our competitors," he says. In return, CNT will offer Brocade's fabric switches to its customers, and CNT will phase out its reseller agreement with QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq: QLGC), Walsh says.