Westcon is expanding its relationship with Brocade to include its range of 8 and 16 Gbps backbones, switches, and adapters, as well as the Ethernet Fabric Switches and the Brocade Network Advisor.
Previously, Westcon’s Brocade offering, which was limited to IP/Ethernet networking products was only available to partners in North America. This announcement brings the existing Brocade offering as well as these products to Westcon’s global partners as well.
Patty Gray, VP of global vendor relationships at Westcon, who is specifically in charge of managing the Brocade relationship globally, said that the expansion into global markets by leveraging Westcon’s global reach is a natural evolution of the Brocade strategy. She said that in a relatively short time with the Brocade IP products (Westcon has carried those since late 2009), the company has been happy with its progress.
The Brocade IP/Ethernet networking products combined with its SAN portfolio create the foundation for the Brocade One approach for designing networks.
“The SAN market continues to be a major growth market in technology,” Gray said, highlighting data that put SAN opportunities in Q1 2011 at over $750 million.
“When we were thinking about our strategy - our goal was to align with the leaders in the key technologies so that we can deliver that same value to our partners,” she said.
The solutions from Brocade will also be incorporated into Westcon’s LEAP (Learn, Experience, Architect, Plan) Centers-of-Excellence. Westcon partners use these centres to show-off technology to customers by providing demonstrations. They are also leveraged for hands-on training.
The specific products in question are the 8 Gbps fibre channel portfolio including backbones, switches and adapters. The 16 Gbps fibre channel portfolio including the DCX 8510 Backbone, 6510 Switch and 1860 Fabric Adapter. The Brocade Network Advisor, the network management solution for data, storage, application delivery, wireless and converged networks that supports fibre channel SANs, FCoE, IP switching and routing, and multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) networks. Finally, Brocade’s Ethernet fabric switches including the VDX 6720 Data Center Switches are also now available through Westcon.
