SAN JOSE, Calif., June 13, 2000-Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO), the leader in networking for the Internet, and Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (BROCADE.) (Nasdaq: BRCD), the leading supplier of Fibre Channel fabric solutions for Storage Area Networking, announced today a multi-phased technology development agreement that will enable customers to seamlessly interconnect SANs (storage area networks) over Internet protocol (IP)-based metropolitan and wide area network infrastructures.
The Cisco/BROCADE agreement will facilitate the interconnection of islands of SANs over IP-based metropolitan area network (MAN) and wide area network (WAN) infrastructures. It will enable the deployment of high-performance SANs spanning multiple remote physical locations and make possible new types of SAN applications that previously could not be implemented over long distances, including disaster recovery, remote data replication, remote data backup, and digital content distribution.
According to Fed Ex Corporation CIO Rob Carter, Fed Ex processes over 100 million electronic transactions a day-each requiring back up, tracking and high-speed retrieval from anywhere at anytime. "Our success depends on locating a wealth of information at one virtual destination. The ability to interconnect SANs over our existing IP-based infrastructure greatly simplifies this endeavor, giving the added reach and flexibility necessary to cost-effectively scale our e-business platform to meet increasing customer demand," said Carter.
In the first phase of the multi-phase technology agreement, the two companies will jointly develop a Fibre Channel interface for Cisco's Catalyst 6000. family of high-performance multilayer switches. In addition, BROCADE and Cisco will certify the interoperability between BROCADE SilkWorm. Fibre Channel fabric switches with Cisco dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) products, which will enable SAN-to-SAN connectivity over high-speed fiber optic MANs.
Cisco and BROCADE have also agreed to develop additional switch-to-switch connection products in the future to further expand customers' options for connecting BROCADE Fibre Channel-based SANs across Cisco networking infrastructures, supporting a variety of high-speed network interfaces. All products resulting from this agreement will be compliant with ANSI T11 standards.
"More and more of our traditional enterprise customers are realizing the tremendous advantages afforded by adopting e-business strategies-a business model that dramatically increases their need to store, protect and quickly access vast amounts of electronic data," said James Richardson, senior vice president of Cisco's Enterprise Line of Business. "Our open, standards-based model has allowed us to extend the Cisco end-to-end networking reach to SANs, which in turn provides our customers with both investment protection and agility to quickly deploy emerging network business solutions. An example of this ability, the results of our relationship with BROCADE will enable our mutual customers to optimize their existing IP-based networking infrastructure to interconnect high performance, Fibre Channel-based SANs across the enterprise."
"BROCADE Fibre Channel fabric switches are the industry's networking foundation of choice to support the data-intensive requirements of storage area networks," said Greg Reyes, BROCADE president and CEO. "This agreement will result in products that will provide seamless connectivity of BROCADE-based SANs over Cisco's networking infrastructure and offer our customers with the best of both worlds: a high performance foundation for storage applications and the ability to interconnect them across their existing MAN/WAN infrastructure. Through this technology agreement, we expect to offer the widest array of options for our customers to interconnect islands of SANs. We believe that the results of this relationship will enable the development of new classes of applications and service offerings."
"As the SAN market leader, Compaq is excited to work with both Cisco and BROCADE to bring this extended SAN capability to market. It will enable us to bring important new business solutions to our customers," said Howard Elias, Vice President & General Manager, Compaq Storage Products Group. "For example, remote data replication will allow our dot.com customers to efficiently distribute web content worldwide for better Internet response time, and remote disaster recovery will enable storage service providers to deliver higher service levels to their client base."
