Brocade Positioned In Gartner's "Visionaries" Quadrant For DC Network Infrastructure

Brocade, the fabric-based datacentre networking solutions provider, has announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the “Visionaries” quadrant in the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Network Infrastructure report.

According to Gartner, vendors placed in the Visionaries quadrant have “demonstrated an ability to increase the features in their offerings, to provide a unique and differentiated approach to the market. A Visionary has innovated in one or more of the key areas of datacentre infrastructure, such as management (including virtualisation), security (including policy enforcement), SDN and operational efficiency, as well as cost reductions.”

Newly introduced in 2013, the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Network Infrastructure closely examines how the market has been transformed with new architectures, new technologies and vendors specifically targeting solutions to address the changing size and density of the datacentre, shifts in traffic patterns and the increasing requirement to simplify network operations. In the report, Gartner states that

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“Requirements for datacentre networking equipment have evolved rapidly during the past four years after a period of architectural stability that lasted at least 15 years. While speed, density and scale increased during that period, the underlying, oversubscribed three-tier hierarchical approach — using end-of-row switches, an aggregation layer and intelligent layer three-core switching — was largely unchanged.” The new report focuses on how vendors are meeting these emerging requirements.

“We believe our placement high in the Visionaries quadrant confirms the innovation and value Brocade Ethernet fabrics have delivered to nearly 1,000 customers since we pioneered this technology category two years ago,” said Jason Nolet, Vice President of the Data Center Networking Group at Brocade. “Enterprises and cloud providers of all sizes will be well-served by following Gartner’s recommendation to include Brocade Ethernet fabrics on their short lists for all datacentre network infrastructures. Our solutions, based on the Brocade VDX switch family and VCS Fabric technology, are empowering a new generation of on-demand datacentres by delivering the world’s most automated, efficient and agile networks.”

Gartner analysts Mark Fabbi and Tim Zimmerman cite a major shift in application architectures and application requirements as a driver of new innovations. According to their report, “The increasing requirement to efficiently deal with east-west traffic has resulted in new approaches, including higher-performance, low-latency switches, the emergence of one- or two-tier architectures, flexible fabric architectures…, and more intelligence and traffic forwarding at the server edge of the datacentre network (through the use of virtual chassis or chassis clustering solutions).”

Additionally, Gartner stated, “The move to simplifying network operations is also driving innovations, including single-tier datacentre switching solutions, auto-configuring network fabrics and increasing integration of network operations with application provisioning tools. Automation in the datacentre has had a major impact on datacentre operations and expectations are that the network will become part of a more coordinated virtual architecture.”

Brocade has leveraged its 15-year heritage in datacentre fabrics to transform Ethernet networks in virtualised and cloud datacentres. In December 2010, Brocade introduced its VCS Fabric technology, the first true Ethernet fabric solution in the industry and, to date, nearly 1,000 customers have deployed these solutions. Brocade VCS Fabric technology provides unmatched automation, enabling customers to deploy network capacity five times more quickly than with legacy network architectures and competitive fabric offerings. This agility is critical to helping IT organisations and cloud providers deploy new applications and services more quickly than ever before.

Brocade VCS Fabric technology also delivers twice the network efficiency and utilisation of legacy network architectures through its unique combination of multi-pathing and load balancing capabilities at all layers of the fabric.

Unique to the industry, Brocade Network Subscription provides a new way for organisations to acquire cloud-optimised network infrastructure on a monthly subscription basis. It is a flexible, open-ended way to deploy network infrastructure and aligns capacity with changing business requirements.

With Brocade Network Subscription, organisations can invest in scaling their businesses instead of their networks by avoiding network infrastructure capital expenditures. They also can avoid rigid multi-year lease obligations through a “pay-as-you-go” approach. In addition, Brocade Direct Support helps maximise availability and performance while eliminating the need to manage separate support contracts.