Dell And Brocade Partner To Deliver The Efficient Enterprise

SAN JOSE, Calif. and ROUND ROCK, Texas, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Brocade and Dell today announced a partnership to offer Dell customers end-to-end computing, networking and storage solutions through the Dell global sales organization. The two companies also intend to collaborate on future development around the management and virtualization of next-generation, efficient data centers, which will help Brocade and Dell customers better utilize IT and gain significant savings in people, time and money.

Specifically, the two companies intend to:

  -- Develop a dynamic infrastructure and optimization solution enabled by
     virtualization to allow customers to deploy and manage an efficient
     data center. Increasingly, customers need applications deployed
     rapidly to meet their performance requirements, with secure and
     reliable access to their mission critical data.
  -- Deliver integrated toolsets to manage application delivery and
     deployment as business services on highly reliable compute, network
     and storage infrastructure. The Brocade and Dell solution will help
     provide capital and operational expense savings by deploying server
     and storage virtualization more broadly across the data center.
This expanded partnership extends Dell's existing Brocade storage networking solutions to provide a comprehensive portfolio of Dell-branded Fibre Channel (FC) host bus adapters and converged network adapters, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switches and Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) switching products, including:

  -- The Brocade Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM(TM)) to provide unified,
     end-to-end management of data center fabrics -- from storage ports on
     networked storage systems to HBAs attached to physical or virtualized
     servers.
  -- Dell switching solutions based on Brocade 8000 FCoE Switch and Brocade
     DCX Backbone to enable data center consolidation and network
     convergence and help address the data growth and application demands
     of evolving enterprise data centers;
  -- Dell server connectivity solutions based on Brocade 815/825 Fibre
     Channel HBAs and Brocade 1010/1020 Converged Network Adapters, to help
     customers deploy an end-to-end storage networking architecture from
     the server to storage;
  -- Dell Ethernet modular switching solutions based on the Brocade NetIron
     MLX Series Routers and Brocade BigIron RX Series Switches to provide
     state-of-the-art 1 and 10 GbE port density and wire-speed performance
     designed to support data center traffic including iSCSI virtualized
     applications and Internet edge-to-aggregation layers routing;
  -- Dell application switching based on the Brocade ServerIron ADX Series
     Switches to provide state-of-the-art Layer 4 through 7 switching
     performance in an intelligent, modular application delivery controller
     platform. The ADX is designed to enable highly secure and scalable
     service infrastructures to help applications run more efficiently and
     with higher availability.
These new Dell-branded products complement the Brocade networking portfolio that Dell already resells. These include Fibre Channel blade switches for the Dell M1000e and Dell PowerEdge blade servers as well as a comprehensive line of Brocade fixed-configuration Fibre Channel switches as part of its SAN switch offerings.
Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Dell Enterprise Product Group says, "We are extending our Brocade relationship beyond storage into the broader data center, offering customers compelling choices and flexibility for compute, networking and storage. Both companies share a vision that next-generation, virtualized data centers should be open and standards-based."

Marc Randall, senior vice president, Brocade Products and Offerings, adds, "Brocade is committed to an ecosystem-centric partnership model in developing and delivering the best-in-class solutions that customers need and want. This agreement further strengthens and diversifies Dell's end-to-end IP and storage networking portfolio and provides customers with a cost-effective, high- performance, and reliable choice to address the demands of evolving enterprise data centers."

Dell expects to make the new Brocade products generally available to customers starting in late 2009.