Brocade Buys Foundry for $3B - Let the FCOE Battles Begin

"Brocade Buys Foundry for $3B - Let the FCOE Battles Begin
Posted by Howard Marks, Jul 22, 2008

After the close of trading yesterday Brocade announced that they were going to buy Foundry Networks for $19.75 in cash and stock or a total of 3 billion dollars. This acquisition puts Brocade in a much better position in the coming data center network wars as just being the dominant Fibre Channel switch vendor isn't worth much as large enterprise datacenters move from separate storage and communications networks to a converged Ethernet.

As the FCOE advocates see it each server needs just 2 10Gbps Ethernet cables to a pair of "top of rack" switches and those two connections will carry storage and other network traffic like peaches and cream across a converged network. Since Cisco is the only vendor to make both Fibre Channel and Ethernet switches they've been big proponents of FCOE (Fibre Channel Over Ethernet) and have the first, pre-standard, top of stack switch.

For Brocade to remain a player in the data center they need to have more than 10Gbps Ethernet blades for their DMX switch or Cisco will just keep nibbling up the edges. The network guys will use Cisco switches for the servers and just uplink them to the DMX for storage services. Once that happens when the time for a new core switch comes around Cisco looks like a natural. With the Foundry buy Brocade picks up a respectable line of high-end Ethernet switching gear it can use to maintain its position as FCOE comes to market

I've written about how I dislike FCOE in the past, even called it a protocol nobody needs, but in my old age I'm starting to mellow. Running Fibre Channel Protocol over 10Gbps Ethernet lets those large organizations with well managed Fiber Channel infrastructures to use the hard earned knowledge and tools they use to manage the FC network to run the FCOE net.

One of the reasons I've been doubtful about FCOE is the question of ownership of the converged switches FCOE travels over especially the combination switches that have both FC and 10 gig ports. The network group in most organizations is going to be yelling "They're Cisco Ethernet switches so we should run them" while the storage admins scream "You guys don't understand storage and will bankrupt the company if we let you run the SAN switches".

Brocade stands to do well in the organizations where the storage guys lead the way. Due to the sales process, finger-pointing and a history, now mostly resolved, of Fibre Channel interoperability issues the vast majority of Fibre Channel SANs are more homogenous than a typical LAN with 1 vendor's switches and HBAs predominant. SAN guys buy their switches from their storage vendors (Over 90% of Brocades sales are OEM through EMC, HDS and the other array vendors) so Brocades relationships with the OEMs should help them compete against the ubiquitous Cisco rep.

Clearly Brocade had to sell Ethernet, or more accurately Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) that Cisco calls Data Center Ethernet, the lossless, prioritized super-duper Ethernet variant that FCOE really runs on. Foundry was the best positioned of the remaining players to remain a going business while also supporting Brocade's needs in the data center. They could have bought Force 10, Extreme or Woven for less but they would have gotten less.

As a Foundry customer at the college I'm going to have to see how things shake out. Brocade may decide to end some of Foundry's peripheral product lines like server load balancers and wireless. For now I'm just glad my sales rep, who was our SE for years, can cash in his options.

Cisco looks to globalize through 'brainforming'

By Stephen Lawson , IDG News Service , 06/26/2008

Innovation in places all over the world is driving a second phase of globalization, and Cisco Systems wants to tap into that trend through "brainforming," the networking giant's CTO said Wednesday.

Brainforming is different from brainstorming because it lets you filter ideas and come up with solutions while still collecting proposals, said Padmasree Warrior, who joined Cisco from Motorola earlier this year. Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis and social networking can help make it happen, she said.

Warrior spoke to reporters in San Francisco from the Cisco Live user conference in Orlando via Cisco's Telepresence high-definition conference system. She and other executives highlighted the company's embrace of globalization, including the establishment of its Globalization Centre East in Bangalore, India, last year and efforts to develop talent around the world.

"Traditionally, capital flowed from developed markets to emerging markets and emerging markets were passive recipients of innovation. That model will change in the next few years, where we'll have multiple centers of economic power," Warrior said.

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The IT industry enabled globalization and is now helping to bring about its second wave, she said. "Ten years ago ... we always created products and solutions for the developed markets, and then we stripped off features and we took them to emerging markets to try to sell them there," Warrior said.

Now innovation, as well as capital, is coming from emerging markets as well, she said. For example, India has developed ways of using SMS (Short Message Service) for mobile transactions that are new to developed countries, Warrior said.

Meanwhile, emerging markets will have unique requirements that Cisco will need to develop for, and there will be a more diverse set of ideas being aired about technology, she said.

To meet the growing demand for its technology in emerging markets, Cisco is aggressively expanding its education and training efforts, other executives said Wednesday. There will be a need for 3 million more people trained on Cisco technologies in the next five years, 80 percent of whom will work for the company's customers, they said. The others will be needed at channel partners and Cisco itself.

Cisco already has regional training centers in Johannesburg and Amman, Jordan, under its Global Talent Acceleration Program. It plans to open ones in India and China, probably by year's end, executives said.

The company also plans to set up two more globalization centers like the one in Bangalore, where Cisco has placed several high-level executives and plans to place one-fifth of its executives across all corporate functions by 2012.

Discussing her new position, Warrior praised the corporate culture at Cisco as customer-focused and pragmatic.

"We know what we're good at and we know what we need to go after," she said.

Visual networking -- combining elements of social networking into video -- is Cisco's best bet over the next three to five years, Warrior said. Collaboration and application delivery through WebEx is another big bet, she said. But the company's routing and switching foundation will also be important, she added.

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"I think our core strengths are going to be very important going forward ... as bandwidth demands go up, you need that strength," Warrior said.

More unpredictable is whether Cisco can truly innovate for emerging markets and which of those markets will take off, she said.

Another initiative with some risks attached is the company's move into sports and entertainment, showcased in its plans for Cisco Field, a stadium for the Oakland Athletics' baseball team in Fremont, California. It would have a wireless network for spectators to watch instant replays and order food, as well as smartphone-based electronic admission tickets. Both of those are very early in their development, she said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

All contents copyright 1995-2008 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

How to make web 2.0 seem like high school educational films

OK, so maybe she's smart and driven, but could someone PLEASE help her out with jazzing up her introduction video?! That "jingle" at the beginning and end sounds like that silly comercial "One to grow On" from back when I was a kid!

Slow Down Hurts IT?

Bear markets and economic worries tend to cloud the way companies see things. During touch times, management has a tendency of painting IT departments as nothing more than a cost-center. Interestingly, this is when resellers jump in to stretch IT budgets and save the day. Or so says one reseller...

Cisco Sees Green?

Miercom Announces "Certified Green" Evaluation Program

April 29, 2008: 03:00 PM EST

Miercom is pleased to announce that the Cisco® Catalyst® 3750-E, 3560-E, 3750, 3560, and 2960 Series Switches are the first products to be designated as Certified Green.

Testing and evaluation of the Certified Green Cisco fixed switches revealed:

-- Efficient power draw under various real-world network conditions
-- High-efficiency power supply operation with intelligent power
management capabilities
-- Superior product efficiency, including VLAN, remote management, and
other green enabling features.

"I would like to congratulate Cisco on being the first company to receive recognition under this new program. Miercom recognizes technologies such as virtualization, energy standby features, and functionality consolidation as being equally important in a product's environmental impact as the power it consumes -- a measurement that seemingly preoccupies other vendors and labs with 'green wash' attempts," said Rob Smithers, CEO of Miercom.

********

Great news for Cisco, except for the fact that in an economic slow-down this is probably one of the least important factors in a sys admin's decision making process. perhaps the real benefit of this announcement is all of Cisco's competition will follow suit. Cross your fingers.

A Good indication why Juniper gear Costs More

Pay Hike for Juniper Networks CEO

"SUNNYVALE, Calif. — The chief executive of network provider Juniper Networks Inc. received a pay package that more than tripled in 2007, according to a filing Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing showed Scott Kriens, 57, received a higher base salary and awards of stock options and restricted stock, pushing his total pay package up by more than $5 million to $7.5 million, up from $2.3 million, in the previous year."

Things that make you say, hmmmmmmmm!

Foundry Networks Likes Curry

MRO-TEK ties-up with Foundry Networks to target enterprise and service providers

"MRO-TEK today clinched a strategic agreement with Foundry Networks Inc whereby Foundry Networks will provide switching and routing solutions to MRO-TEK’s enterprise and service provider customers in India.

According to the collaboration, MRO-TEK will dispense and assist Foundry’s high-performance enterprise switching, routing, security and application traffic management solutions, including edge and backbone Ethernet switches. The company will also deliver web and content-aware application switches, network-wide security solutions, wireless LAN and access points, wide area access routers and Internet provider and service provider core MPLS routers."

Someone had better have a taste for Tandori!

Foundry Networks downgraded to "sell"

NEW YORK, April 14 (newratings.com) - Analyst Hamed Khorsand of BWS Financial downgrades Foundry Networks Inc (FDRY) to "sell," while revising his estimates for the company. The target price is set to $8.

In a research note published on April 11, the analyst mentions that the company has issued its revenue guidance for 1Q08 at $148-$150 million, short of the estimates and the consensus. Foundry Networks’ 2Q performance is likely to be weak, with clients setting new annual budgets and internal goals for communication and equipment needs, the analyst adds. Juniper Networks’ new switch product line represents a risk to Foundry Networks’ earnings, BWS Financial says. The EPS estimate for 2008 has been revised to $0.39.

Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge

Official Google Blog: Encouraging people to contribute knowledge

In an attempt to combat everyone's favorite online Encyclopedia, Google plans to launch a feature called Google Knol, which aims to 'to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read."

Interesting, but doesn't Wikipedia already achieve this with fairly sound results?

Foundry Networks’ ServerIron Honored With SearchNetworking.com 2008 Product Leadership Award

ServerIron Wins the Silver Award in the Application Delivery Controller Category

March 24, 2008: 08:00 AM EST

SANTA CLARA, Calif., March 24, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) — Foundry Networks(r), Inc. (Nasdaq:FDRY), a performance and total solutions leader for end-to-end switching and routing, today announced that the ServerIron(r) family of application delivery switches received a Silver Award in the category of application delivery controllers (ADC) for the SearchNetworking.com(tm) 2008 Product Leadership Awards... (more)

Foundry Networks 4Q Profit Jumps

Foundry Networks 4th-Quarter Profit, Sales Jump

"NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Networking equipment maker Foundry Networks Inc. said Tuesday its fourth-quarter profit jumped 84 percent, helped by growing sales to communications service providers and the U.S. government.

Foundry's shares nonetheless fell in after-hours trading.

The company earned $28.9 million, or 18 cents per share, up from $15.7 million, or 10 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding stock option costs and other items, the company earned 24 cents per share in the latest quarter.

Revenue rose 28 percent to $168.7 million from $132 million.

Analysts, on average, were expecting a profit of 23 cents per share, excluding stock option costs, on sales of $166.1 million, according to a poll by Thomson Financial.

Banc of America Securities analyst Tim Long had expected Foundry's results to beat his expectations of a profit of 24 cents per share.

For the full year, Foundry earned $81.1 million, or 52 cents per share, up from $38.7 million, or 26 cents per share, a year earlier.

Revenue rose 28 percent to $607.2 million from $473.3 million.

The company been diversifying its federal government business, increasing its reach into the service provider market and expanding its share of the enterprise market, Bobby Johnson, president and chief executive, said in a statement.

Shares fell 92 cents, or 6.2 percent, to $14 in after-hours electronic trading. The stock had closed up 52 cents, or 3.6 percent, at $14.92 in the regular session. "

Perhaps your IT guy has finally realized Cisco 'aint the only game in town. Or, maybe Foundry's BI-RX-32 has started turning heads. Either way the race just heated up and we've got a front row seat!

Serveriron just got easier

Foundry Networks Enhances Usability And Eases Manageability For The ServerIron Family Of Application Delivery Switches

Serveriron just got easier

“(Foundry) announced advanced stateful UDP-based Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) load balancing for Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, role-based user management tool, and enhanced graphical user interface (GUI) for its award-winning modular- and chassis-based ServerIron® family of application delivery switches….”

What does this mean? With the release of Trafficworks Release 10.2 (TW10.2), Foundry further increased the ease with with you can control application access and maintain greater network security with a simplified and intuitive role-based management system. Sweet.

Juniper leaps into switching market

Vendor has Cisco in its sights as it adds to its portfolio with three new series of Ethernet switches

Doug Woodburn, CRN 29 Jan 2008

Juniper Networks has thrown down the gauntlet to rivals Cisco, HP ProCurve and Foundry by announcing its entry into the $4bn Ethernet switching market.

The networking and security vendor’s new EX-series family of enterprise switches comes in three forms: the EX 3200 series; the EX 4200 series; and the modular EX 8200 series. All run on Juniper’s carrier-class Junos software.

According to the blurb, Juniper’s new switches will deliver “the operation simplicity, carrier-class reliability and infrastructure consolidation and integration that help high-performance businesses accelerate the deployment of business-enabling applications and services across the network”.

Hitesh Sheth, executive vice president and general manager of the Ethernet
Platforms Business Group at Juniper, said: “For many enterprises, legacy network infrastructure has become a pacing factor in meeting their high-performance business requirements.

“Enterprises can no longer afford the complexity, cost and risk of turning on new network features for fear of taking down the network. Through the introduction of our high-performance family of Ethernet switches based on Junos software,
Juniper is delivering a solution that meets the business, economic and technical requirements of today's service-enabling network infrastructure.”

The EX 3200 and 4200 series – whose list prices start at $4,000 and $6,000 respectively - are expected to be available in March. The EX 8200 series is expected to be available in the second half.