| Type | Public |
|---|---|
| Traded as | NASDAQ: BRCD |
| Industry | Networking Hardware and Software |
| Founded | 1995 |
| Headquarters | San Jose, California, USA |
| Key people | Michael Klayko, CEO |
| Products | Fibre Channel backbones, switches, and directors; SAN extension and routing; network management applications; FCoE/CEE solutions; IP routing, switching, application traffic management, security, and wireless mobility products |
| Revenue | $2.2 billion USD (FY10) |
| Employees | 5,000 |
| Website | www.brocade.com |
'Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation and a technology company specializing in data and storage networking products. The company's product portfolio spans across enterprise (LAN, WLAN) Switches, WAN (Internet) Routers, SAN Switches, Application Delivery Controllers, Network Security Appliances, Ethernet/Storage Network Adapters and PHY Transceivers. Founded in 1995, Brocade Communications is headquartered in San Jose, California, USA. As of December 2010[update], it holds the largest market share in SAN switches.[1]
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Brocade was founded in August 1995, by Seth Neiman (a venture capitalist, a former executive from Sun Microsystems and a professional racer), Kumar Malavalli (a noted technology entrepreneur, philanthropist and co-author of the Fiber Channel technology) and Paul R. Bonderson (a former executive from Intel Corporation and Sun Microsystems). Seth Neiman became the first CEO of the company.
The company's first product, SilkWorm, which was a Fiber Channel Switch, was released in early 1997.
Brocade was incorporated on May 14, 1999, in Delaware. On May 25, 1999, the company went public at a split-adjusted price of $4.75. On Initial Public Offering (IPO) 3,250,000 shares were offered with an additional 487,500 shares offered to the underwriters to cover over-allotments. The top 3 underwriters, based on number of shares, for Brocade's IPO were, in order, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, BT Alex.Brown, & Dain Rauscher Wessels.
Brocade stock is traded in the National Market System of the NASDAQ GS stock market, under the ticker symbol BRCD.
Brocade's first Fiber Channel switch SilkWorm 1000 (SW1000) (released in 1997) was based on the "Stitch" ASIC and their own VxWorks-based firmware (Fabric OS or FOS). SilkWorm eventually came to be a long-lived marketing designation for an entire line of products, with the first product being retro-named the SilkWorm 1000 (SW1000) to distinguish it from subsequent platforms. Bruce Bergman was the CEO during most of this period. Product names were generally puns on various kinds of woven fabric, since a switched Fibre Channel network is also called a "fabric".
In 1998, Gregory Reyes joined the company as CEO. During the next three years of the dot-com boom and bust, Brocade released its "Flannel" ASIC (which supported an FC-AL interface to a FC-SW fabric), added services (such as zoning and support for translating private loop devices into the fabric), and ultimately the next generation of switches based on the "LOOM" ASIC. In 2001, Brocade released the SilkWorm 6400, which was designated "director" similarly[2] to IBM ESCON directors already well-established[3] on mainframe computer market. The term "director" became universally used for more expensive FC switches.[4]
From 2001 to 2003, Brocade released switches based on its third generation ASIC, "BLOOM" (Big LOOM). BLOOM introduced increased throughput of 2 Gbit/s instead of 1 Gbit/s. Brocade integrated BLOOM into its first "pure" director, the SilkWorm 12000, in April 2002. The director offered up to 128 ports in two 64-port pseudo-switches (domains). The 12000 represented several internal architecture and technical changes besides the new ASIC: it had an upgraded control processor architecture (Intel i960 moved to PowerPC 405GP), changed the embedded operating system (FOS v4.0 migrated from Wind River Systems VxWorks to MontaVista Linux), and introduced the backplane architecture (hierarchical PCI buses with replaceable blades attached to a backplane). The Bloom ASIC also introduced a notable capability of frame-level Fibre Channel trunking, which provided high throughput with load balancing across multiple cables. It needed to be implemented in the ASIC hardware to ensure in-order delivery of frames. Also hot firmware upgrade was introduced with FOS v4.1 in October 2003.
At the time, Brocade's main rival, McDATA, held over 90% market share in director segment, owing to strong position first in ESCON market and then in FICON market. The SilkWorm 12000 director gained over one-third of the market share after its release in 2002. Brocade added mainframe customers with FICON and FICON CUP support on the SilkWorm 12000.[5] In 2003, the SilkWorm 12000 was named “Storage Product of the Year” by Computing.[5]
In 2004, the BLOOM II improved on the previous ASIC design by reducing its power consumption and die size, while maintaining 2 Gbit/s technology. It powered Brocade’s second generation director, the SilkWorm 24000. Still a 128 port design, it was the first one that could operate as a single 128-port switch (a single domain). The new director also used approximately two thirds less power than its predecessor. Brocade introduced also its first multiprotocol Fibre Channel router, the SilkWorm 7420. Brocade also acquired Rhapsody Networks (a SAN virtualization startup company). This was also the time frame in which Brocade first entered into the embedded switch market, delivering multiple switches physically integrated into other vendors' hardware, such as storage controllers and blade server chassis.
As of March 2009, Brocade had sold over 10 million SAN switch ports with over 44,000 directors installed, and held 75.5% of the overall SAN switch market (Dell'Oro Group, 1Q09 SAN Report).
In Late 2010 Brocade released the VCS product line. The individual products are identified by the VDX moniker. These are CEE/Data center bridging (DCB) and TRILL based switches allowing for multi-hop Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).
1st Generation - 1997
2nd Generation - 1999
3rd Generation - 2001
4th Generation - 2004
5th Generation - 2008
Brocade hardware products include Fibre Channel switches and directors; Ethernet switches and routers; application delivery controllers (load balancers, etc.); fabric extension switches; embedded switch blades; Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs); and Converged Network Adapters (CNAs). Other hardware solutions from Brocade support common protocols that include iSCSI, FCIP, GigE, FICON, FCoE, CEE, and Layer 2-7 networking protocols.
| Brocade name | Brocade switch type |
McDATA name before acquisition |
Max. port speed (Gb/s) |
Max. ports | IBM reseller type-model [6] |
HP reseller designation [6] |
EMC Connectrix reseller designation [6][7] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1000 | 1 | - | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 2000 | 7 | - | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 2800 | 2, 6 | - | 1 | 16 | 2109-S16 | 16B | DS-16B |
| 3000 | 18 | - | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 3014 | 33 | - | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 3016 | 22 | - | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 3200 | 16 | - | 2 | 8 | 3534-F08 | 2/8 | DS-8B2 |
| 3250 | 27 | - | 2 | 8 | 2005-H08 | 2/8V | ? |
| 3800 | 9 | - | 2 | 16 | 2109-F16 | 2/16 | DS-16B2 |
| 3800VL | 17 | - | ? | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| 3850 | 26 | - | 2 | 16 | 2005-H16 | 2/16V | DS-16B3 |
| 3900 | 12 | - | 2 | 32 | 2109-F32 | 2/32 | DS-32B2 |
| 12000 | 10 | - | 2 | 2 x 64 | 2109-M12 | 2/64 | ED-12000-B |
| 24000 | 21 | - | 4 | 128 | 2109-M14 | 2/128 | ED-24000B |
| 48000 | 42 | - | 4 | 384 | 2109-M48 | 4/256 | ED-48000B |
| 200E | 34 | - | 4 | 16 | 2005-B16 | 4/16 | DS-220B |
| 4100 | 32 | - | 4 | 32 | 2005-B32 | 4/32 | DS-4100B |
| 4900 | 44 | - | 4 | 64 | 2005-B64 | 4/64 | DS-4900B |
| 5000 | 58 | - | 4 | 32 | 2005-B5K | 4/32B | DS-5000B |
| AP-7420 | ? | - | 4 | 16 | 2109-A16 | ? | ? |
| 7500 | 46 | - | 4 | 16 | 2005-R18 | 400 MPR | ? |
| 7600 app | 55.2 | - | 4 | 16 | ? | ? | ? |
| DCX | 62 | - | 8 | 768 | 2499-384 | DC Backbone | ED-DCX-B |
| 300 | 71 | - | 8 | 24 | 2498-24E | 8/24 | DS-300B |
| 5100 | 66 | - | 8 | 40 | 2498-B40 | 8/40 | DS-5100B |
| 5300 | 64 | - | 8 | 80 | 2498-B80 | 8/80 | DS-5300B |
| VA-40FC | ? | - | 8 | 40 | ? | ? | ? |
| Mi10K | - | Intrepid 10000 | 10 | 256 | 2027-256 | ? | ED-10000M |
| M6140 | - | Intrepid 6140 | 10 | 140 | 2027-140 | 2/140 | ED-140M |
| ? | - | ED-6064 | 10 | 64 | 2032-064 | 2/64 | ED-64M |
| ? | - | Sphereon 4300 | 2 | 12 | 2026-E12 | ? | ? |
| M4400 | - | Sphereon 4400 | 4 | 16 | 2026-416 | ? | DS-4400M |
| ? | - | Sphereon 4500 | 2 | 24 | 2026-224 | ? | DS-24M2 |
| M4700 | - | Sphereon 4700 | 4 | 32 | 2026-432 | ? | DS-4700M |
| ? | - | Sphereon 3232 | 2 | 32 | 2027-232 | ? | DS-32M2 |
| ? | - | ES-3016 | 1 | 16 | 2031-016 | ? | DS-16M |
| ? | - | ES-3032 | 1 | 32 | 2031-032 | ? | DS-32M |
| ? | - | ES-3216 | 2 | 16 | 2031-216 | ? | DS-16M2 |
Besides selling these switches under their own name, some models are also sold as Dell PowerConnect-B series switches.[8] Dell retains more or less the Brocade's model name. Unlike the own switches with different software images for Ethernet-switches being used as a layer-2 switch or layer-3 router the firmware for the B-series PowerConnect switches is a combined firmware. The switches can also run the layer 4-7 switching firmware from Brocade to use these switches as hardware-based network load balancer
Besides the pure Ethernet-switches (which are originally Foundry swiches as B-ML, B-MX and B-FCX switches,[8] Dell also offers Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and Fibre Channel switches:
The Brocade product portfolio also includes network management applications.
Within the Ethernet/IP networking market, Brocade competes with the following companies :
Within the Storage Area Network (SAN) market, Brocade competes with the following companies :
In 2005, Gregory Reyes resigned as CEO after being indicted for securities fraud relating to backdating stock option grants. After spending about a year investigating these allegations, the Department of Justice (DoJ), through the US Attorney’s Office, the SEC, and the FBI filed criminal and civil charges against Reyes. In roughly the same time frame, the DoJ, SEC, and FBI also began investigating over 100 other companies for similar activities. Greg Reyes and Stephanie Jensen, the former vice president of HR, were charged with 12 counts of fraud.[15] Two counts were dismissed, and on August 7, 2007, Reyes was convicted on the remaining 10 counts.[16] On January 16, 2008, he was sentenced to 21 months in prison and ordered to pay a $15 million dollar fine.[17] Stephanie Jensen, Brocade's former vice president of human resources, was convicted in a separate trial.[18] On March 19, 2008, she was sentenced to four months in prison and ordered to pay a $1.25 million fine.[19] The convictions of both Reyes and Jensen were appealed.[20] On August 18, 2009 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned Gregory Reyes' convictions and sent the case back to the lower courts for retrial, where he was again convicted, and sentenced to 18 months in prison and a $10 million fine.[21] As of August 2011[update] Reyes is incarcerated at the Taft Correctional Institution in Taft, California, with an anticipated release date of December 29, 2011.[22] As of August 2011[update], a second appeal remains pending.[23]