Expanding Brocade’s OEM reseller relationship strategy, NetApp is now slated to resell three new Brocade products – a switch, blade and converged network adapters – as part of NetApp’s Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCOE) line of products.

The relationship with NetApp marks only the most recent in Brocade’s strategy to sign on server and storage vendors, most prominently IBM, to resell Brocade’s equipment together with their own technologies to create a more complete solution for customers.

The strategy is thought to help fortify these vendors against Cisco which unveiled its Unified Computing soup-to-nuts data center technology suite earlier this year which included Cisco-branded servers.

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Likely candidates for future OEM deals include Dell, EMC and Hitachi.

“This is a continuation of building out the momentum with the OEM channels,” Ahmad Zamer, Brocade senior project manager tells Channel Insider, calling the strategy an “extremely important” one to Brocade. “There will be more announcements made.”

For channel partners, these OEM deals provide the opportunity for resellers to offer their customers end-to-end solutions, Zamer says.

Brocade says the new FCOE products will allow customers to bridge their Ethernet and Fibre Channel Networks by offering both 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) and 8Gb FC ports within the same platform, as either a top-of-rack switch or a blade in the Brocade DCX or DCX-4S backbone.

Brocade says that at the server level, the Brocade converged network adapters help customers consolidate their Ethernet and FC cabling by supporting both protocols on the same port.

NetApp also announced a new next-generation unified target adapter for its storage systems, switches, and converged network adapters, designed to allow customers to simplify their IT infrastructure at the server edge while leveraging their existing investments in fibre channel architecture.