Gigabit Ethernet start-up Brocade Communications Systems Inc says it will release its first gigabit switch product next month, based on Fiber Channel standards. Brocade, based in Santa Clara, California, was established a year ago to develop a product that would meet the current industry demand for greater networked storage and faster network backbones. The company […]
Gigabit Ethernet start-up Brocade Communications Systems Inc says it will release its first gigabit switch product next month, based on Fiber Channel standards. Brocade, based in Santa Clara, California, was established a year ago to develop a product that would meet the current industry demand for greater networked storage and faster network backbones. The company will initially target major OEM customers in the data storage, database server, and film, video and broadcasting markets throughout the world. Brocade was co-founded by Paul Bodersun, formally with Sun Microsystems Inc, responsible for the first Fiber Channel products introduced to the industry back in 1994, and Kumar Malavalli, who used to work for Hewlett-Packard Co as its senior Fiber Channel architect. Fiber Channel was designed for network architectures and has become a standard for disk array attachment and clustering. The product, which as yet hasn’t been named, incorporates a modular 2 to 16 Fiber Channel gigabit switch with a capability of supporting full gigabit speeds in full duplex mode, and a starting price of $3,000. The company, which employs 40 people, has gone to LSI Logic Corp of Milpitas, California, to fabricate its custom chips, while Sunnyvale, California-based Manufacturers Services Ltd will handle the manufacturing. Brocade believes that it is entering into the Gigabit switching market at just the right time and it is predicting that its revenues will exceed $100m by the year 2000.
