FOO: With our market dominance in SAN space, we are seeing convergence of technology in LAN domain across datacenters. Brocade is committed to add resources in R&D, marketing development and other initiatives to offer best of class solutions for a converged environment. Brocade is basically not a niche player but a leader to provide end to end networking solutions.

We preach and practice TCO across the entire spectrum of our solutions. We are a preferred choice of networking vendor to a CIO. We begin with small deployment to help them mitigate risk and gain confidence in technology and products.

FOO: From the mentioned alliances, Brocade is the only competent vendor, apart from Cisco which offers end-to-end networking solutions. Our leadership position in SAN is a huge plus for enterprise customers and our partners. Another key advantage is our ability to up sell and cross sell IP products across our loyal customer base. Ethernet solutions now offer a holistic stable of solutions for their environment and further help us make deeper strides across enterprise accounts.

FOO: Greenfield projects obviously represent incremental upsell and exponential business for us. We have identified healthcare, media/entertainment, education and public sector as key verticals. Brocade is carefully weaving its channel ecosystem through vertical specific solution providers/ partners. They can naturally pitch right solutions and project technical expertise to sell to a particular segment well aware of sales cycle and other nuances. Our partners need to have support capability and offer services for customer satisfaction after project completion.

FOO: For Brocade SAN, we will collaborate more than compete, since the overlap for IP products with most OEM vendors is minimal.  Ours being a robust organization of professionals with abundant experience in networking domain, it will not be a steep climb to develop channel ecosystem. However, new products and market dynamics means the need to be a differentiator to channels. Many of our OEM partners do not sell Brocade SAN directly to customers but through their dedicated partners. These partners became our feet on street for IP, apart from our direct relationship with a focused set of System Integrators and VARs.

FOO: We are very selective about our partners to ensure their profitability and also align with ‘right players for right verticals’. They might be selling competitor offerings but many deal in Brocade SAN be it HP,IBM or EMC reseller. It now gives this set of partners more choices to include IP products in their portfolio. Moreover, our products are very much like Cisco in terms of user interface, product range, technology and other features.

FOO : Cloud and virtualization remain a priority in terms of product development and market outlook. Being an infrastructure player and not an application player, we will position ourselves to be strong in these emerging technologies. Converged environment is a key trend as we are witnessing an emergence of partners dominant in SAN space are now adding LAN portfolio. This integrated approach by solution providers will help them grow their business.