Westcon Group Teams With Brocade

Westcon Group, Inc., a VAD of unified communications, infrastructure, data center, and security solutions with a network of specialty resellers, announced the expansion of its relationship with Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Effective immediately, Westcon will now offer resellers access to Brocade’s entire SAN portfolio in key markets worldwide including the company’s first fabric-based, end-to-end networking solutions based on 16Gbps FC technologies.

This announcement builds upon a current agreement to distribute Brocade’s network infrastructure products including the IP/Ethernet networking portfolio. Together, the company’s IP/Ethernet networking and SAN products are the foundation for Brocade One – a approach to designing networks and helping customers smoothly transition to a world where information and applications reside anywhere.

"Over the past several years, we’ve built a strong working partnership with Brocade – quickly becoming one of the company’s ‘go-to’ global distributors. Today’s announcement is a natural extension of this relationship," said Patty Gray, Vice President, Global Vendor Relationships, Westcon Group. "The ability to distribute both Brocade IP/Ethernet and SAN offerings is a major milestone for us, immediately solidifying our leadership in the fast-growing distribution market for next-generation data center technology."

According to leading analysts, the SAN switch market could triple over the next 4 years.

"At Brocade, we’re committed to helping our partners deliver cloud-optimized networking solutions to facilitate the smooth transition to a virtualized world," said Barbara Spicek, Vice President of Global Channels at Brocade. "Westcon is clearly one of the market’s leading distributors, offering resellers access to some of the best data center technologies in the world, as well as deep networking expertise.  As customers begin to adopt cloud architectures – private, hybrid or public – resellers will surely benefit from the level of support and technical know-how that Brocade and Westcon can offer."

Further demonstrating its commitment to Brocade, Westcon also announced plans to incorporate these solutions in Westcon’s LEAP (Learn, Experience, Architect and Plan) Centers-of-Excellence. These environments are designed to provide VARs a facility for hands-on training, technology demonstration, and briefing center capabilities across a range of solutions targeted at next-generation, virtualized data centers.

New Brocade products
to Westcon’s distribution line include:

• 16 Gbps Fibre Channel Portfolio: Brocade FC backbones, switches, and adapters are the foundation for virtualized data centers and private cloud architectures. This end-to-end 16Gbps Fibre Channel portfolio includes the Brocade DCX 8510 Backbone, the Brocade 6510 Switch, the Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter, Brocade Network Advisor 11.1 management software and the Brocade Fabric OS 7.0 operating system.
• Ethernet Fabric Switches: The Brocade VDX 6720 Data Center Switches are designed to improve network utilization, maximize application availability, increase scalability, and simplify network architecture in virtualized data centers. Brocade VDX 6720 data center switches play a role in building data center Ethernet fabrics – revolutionizing the design of Layer 2 networks and providing an intelligent foundation for cloud computing.
• 8 Gbps FC Portfolio: Brocade 8 Gbps backbones, switches, and adapters provide an efficient and scalable network infrastructure to support the growth of virtualized environments. Included are special-purpose blades that enable data-at-rest encryption, SAN extension, and FCoE fabric-based services.
• Brocade Network Advisor: The unified network management solution for data, storage, application delivery, wireless, and converged networks, it supports FC SANs, FCoE, IP switching and routing, and Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks – providing end-to-end visibility across different network types through an unified user experience.
• SAN Transceivers: Optical transceiver modules that plug into Brocade switches, backbones, HBAs, and CNAs to deliver Fibre Channel connectivity that satisfies a range of speed and distance requirements.