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Spotlight: Brocade`s Rise to Storage and Networking Fame


After years of an acquisition spree in an effort to fortify its position against giant rival Cisco, networking and storage vendor Brocade (NASDAQ:BRCD) has reportedly put itself on the sales block and technology giants including HP and IBM are considered likely suitors for the San Jose, Calif.-based company. Here’s a look back at some of Brocade’s recent milestones and acquisitions as it sought to gain strategic advantage against its rivals.
 
  • 1995 - Brocade Communications Systems founded.
  • 2000 - HP signs an OEM agreement with Brocade to resell its SilkWorm 2800 Fibre Channel fabric switch as the connectivity framework for the HP Open SAN Initiative.
  • 2003 - Brocade buys storage fabric switch maker Rhapsody Networks for $175 million.
  • 2005 - Brocade buys SAN management software company Therion Software Corp., for $9.3 million in cash.
  • 2006 - Brocade Acquires NuView, a provider of network attached storage software, for $60 million.
  • 2007 - Brocade’s core products and market focused on Fibre Channel connections for storage area networks is estimated to be worth nearly $2 billion.
  • 2007 - Brocade completes acquisition of McData Corp. for $973 million. The deal is estimated by Dell’Oro group to give Brocade a 69 percent share of the market for storage area network switches against Cisco’s 26 percent.
  • 2007 - Brocade acquires Silverback Networks for an undisclosed sum. Silverback was a developer of network processors to accelerate speed and performance of storage traffic in networked storage environments.
  • 2008 - Brocade acquires Ethernet LAN company, Foundry Networks, for $2.6 billion.
  • April 2009 - IBM announces that it will resell Brocade routers and switches to its enterprise customers under its own brand. The deal is viewed as a defensive move by the companies against Cisco’s “Unified Computing” data center strategy. It sets off a wave of similar deals by Brocade with other companies.
  • August 2009 - Brocade announces an OEM reseller relationship with NetApp to resell three new Brocade products – a switch, blade and converged network adapters.
  • September 2009 - Brocade and Dell form partnership that enables channel partners to resell their joint data center solutions.
  • October 2009 - Brocade quietly puts itself on the market. Analysts speculate likely suitors are HP, IBM and Oracle. Oracle says it’s not interested.