Brocade and EMC Expand Alliance

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. and EMC Corporation have expanded their strategic alliance with joint investment in technology integration, solutions development, and go-to-market strategies to help customers increase data center efficiency. As a result, the two companies have released the first set of solutions and services to help IT organizations consolidate, virtualize and protect mission-critical Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SharePoint, and Oracle Database 11g environments and build an open, agile and flexible foundation for the private cloud.

Brocade and EMC have a long history of delivering tightly integrated products and solutions that help improve data center efficiency and reduce both capital and operating costs. In collaboration with joint customers, the two companies have developed an integrated, repeatable methodology based upon open support for multiple applications, servers and operating systems; greater agility through the use of Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere virtualization technologies; and flexible solutions deployment options from Brocade and EMC professional services organizations.

The joint methodology outlines three steps to improve data center efficiency and set a foundation for the private cloud through:

• Consolidating networks, servers and storage to reduce hardware and operating costs and gain control of data center sprawl
• Virtualizing application and database server environments to increase utilization and flexibility, and leveraging EMC and Brocade virtualization-aware storage and management to streamline provisioning and optimization across the virtual data center
• Protecting applications through fabric-based encryption as well as local and remote replication, without impacting application performance or availability

New solutions designed for Microsoft and Oracle application environments provide customers with the ability to consolidate, virtualize and protect their application environments. The solutions combine core Brocade and EMC technologies including EMC tiered storage platform with the Brocade DCX Backbone infrastructure, Microsoft Hyper-V and VMware vSphere virtualization solutions management software, Brocade DCX Backbone and RSA Key Manager for fabric-based encryption, and EMC RecoverPoint:  

• Microsoft SharePoint core infrastructure and backup, recovery
• Microsoft Exchange core infrastructure and disaster recovery
• Oracle Database 11g Midrange-tiered Storage over Network File Systems (NFS)
• Oracle Database 11g Enterprise-tiered Storage over Storage Area Networks (SAN)

Brocade and EMC will jointly develop additional solutions based on their leading technologies in the areas of consolidation, virtualization and protection. The joint development is executed through cooperative engineering within EMC Global Solution Centers. In addition, EMC and Brocade have invested in Microsoft Technology Centers to provide customers with the ability to preview these solutions with Brocade, EMC and Microsoft experts available to help tailor solutions to their specific IT environments.

Brocade Global Services and EMC Consulting are working closely together to deliver joint professional services to design and deploy the new solutions tailored to meet the specific needs of individual customer requirements and technologies deployed today. In addition, the companies are leveraging the strength of their tight joint support relationship, which includes a defined escalation process for faster resolution of critical support issues.

"Brocade and EMC are leveraging our long-standing, strategic partnership to deliver open and agile solutions to enable converged data centers," said John McHugh, Chief Marketing Officer at Brocade. "The BE Next initiative defines how Brocade and EMC are cooperating to supply private cloud infrastructure that protects our customers’ data and enables high performance virtualization."

"Companies worldwide are working to align their data centers with business needs while managing complexity and cost, ensuring flexibility and performance, and simplifying management of application environments," said Frank Hauck, Executive Vice President at EMC Corporation. "The new solutions from EMC and Brocade will allow enterprises to cost-effectively consolidate, virtualize and protect critical information across their applications environments as well as optimize their existing investments with the goal of preparing for their journey to the private cloud."

Availability
New solutions from Brocade and EMC are currently available and will be demonstrated at EMC World in Boston, May 10-13.