Nine things you probably don't know about Brocade
1) The company is bigger than even we thought, with 4,700 staff operating in 160 countries and over US$2 billion in annual revenues.
2) They bought Foundry Networks in 2008 to extend their reach from SAN devices into the IP networking space. While a number of the company's latest networking products have some lineage to Foundry solutions, they are all now sold under the Brocade brand.
3) 60% of their revenue comes from products introduced in the last 12 months, which Brocade claims is a strong indicator that their billions being invested in research and development are paying off for customers.
4) The company has over 90% marketshare in the global SAN market, most of which is sold under the IBM, Hitachi, EMC, Dell and HP brands.
5) 85% of their products are manufactured under contract by Foxcon in Shenzhen, China, while the others are manufactured by Foxcon in Austin, Texas (don't think this is unusual, most vendors manufacture in China, it's just most aren't this open about it).
6) Brocade has a channel-only strategy and doesn't sell direct to the end user.
7) The company has some impressive technical claims:
a. The first Layer 3 switchb. The first Ethernet fabric switch
c. Its solutions power 90% of the world's Internet Exchange Points (IXPs)
d. The first Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), 10 GbE and 100GbE switches
8) They provide free 6-hour web-based bridging training for Cisco trained engineers to become certified on Brocade products.
9) The company announced on September 1 that it will start to offer its hardware on a subscription basis. To TechDay's knowledge this is the first networking hardware manufacturer to offer its products this way.
For more information visit www.brocade.com.
