Brocade

By CIO New Zealand staff | Monday, January 11 2010

This year Brocade has been gearing up for an attack on Cisco Systems’ imposing position in the networking space.

Global HQ: San Jose, California, US
Website: www.brocade.com
Global leader: Michael Klayko, CEO
Local leader: Graham Schultz, regional manager, ANZ
Core activity: Datacentre networking products and services
Revenue: US$1.5 billion (FY07-08 ended October 25)
Key customers: Westpac Banking Corporation, Commonwealth Bank of Australia,
Optus, Vodafone, Railcorp, Suncorp-Metway
Employees: 3900

This year Brocade has been gearing up for an attack on Cisco Systems’ imposing position in the networking space. Laying the groundwork for its battle plan, the company has inked a couple of key deals with major hardware manufacturers.

Dell has signed a partnership with the company to develop management and virtualisation datacentre technology. It has also agreed to resell a series of Brocade networking and storage products.

Meanwhile, Brocade is strengthening its partnership with IBM and Hewlett-Packard, a move intended to deliver a better grip on the networking market.

Locally, the company is expected to appoint a master distributor in Australia for its IP switch and router products before Christmas, which has been read as an indication of readiness to switch into a two-tiered model.

Due to this strategic reinforcement of its position, analysts remain unfazed by a slight dip in revenue in 2009.
Rachael Bolton