Brocade Communications Systems

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Brocade, Inc.
Type Public (NASDAQ: BRCD)
Founded 1995
Headquarters San Jose, California, USA
Key people Michael Klayko, CEO
Industry Networking Hardware and Software
Products Fibre Channel switches and directors, FAN solutions, SAN extension and routing, SAN management applications
Revenue $750.6 million USD (2006)
Employees 2,400
Website www.brocade.com

Brocade, Inc. NASDAQ: BRCD, based in Silicon Valley, designs, manufactures, and sells storage networking solutions and management applications for storage area networks (SANs) and file area networks (FANs). For over ten years, Brocade has been a major influence in promoting the growth of SANs through the innovation of fibre channel switches and directors. Recently, Brocade has been swept up in the options backdating scandal and its former CEO has been convicted of 10 counts of securities fraud in connection with backdating of stock options.

Contents

Brocade was founded in August 1995 by Seth Neiman (CEO and VC funding), Paul Bonderson (VP Engineering), and Kumar Malavalli (Standards and Technology). Dave Banks (Systems and ASICs) and Paul Ramsay (Software) came onboard immediately thereafter. Brocade released its first Fibre Channel switch, the "SilkWorm", in early 1997 based on the "Stitch" ASIC and their own VxWorks-based Fabric Operating System (Fabric OS or FOS). ("SilkWorm" ultimately came to be a marketing designation for an entire line of switches, directors, and routers, with the first product being renamed the "SilkWorm 1000" to distinguish it from subsequent platforms.) Bruce Bergman was the CEO during most of this period.

In 1998, Gregory Reyes joined the company as CEO. During the next three years of the dot-com boom and bust, Brocade released its "Flannel" ASIC (which supported an FC-AL interface to a switched fabric), added many value-added fabric services (such as zoning and support for translating private loop devices into the fabric), and ultimately the next generation of switches based on the "LOOM" ASIC. In 2001, Brocade released the SilkWorm 6400 with an integrated management application, Fabric Manager 1.0.

From 2001 to 2003, Brocade released numerous switches and a director based on its third generation ASIC, "BLOOM" (Big LOOM). Brocade integrated this 2 Gb ASIC into its first director, the SilkWorm 12000, in April of 2002. This director, based on FabricOS v4.0 (which used Linux as a base OS), offered up to 128 ports in two 64-port domains, and supported hot code load starting in October of 2003 with the introduction of Fabric OS v4.1. From an internal architecture and technical perspective, the 12000 was significant for Brocade in that it represented a change on five major fronts: it used a new ASIC (BLOOM instead of LOOM), had an upgraded control processor architecture (Intel i960 moved to PowerPC 405GP), changed the embedded operating system (Wind River Systems VxWorks to MontaVista Linux), and shifted the system architecture (single PCI bus "pizza box" to hierarchical PCI bus with hot-swap blades). This mandated enormous modifications to the fabric operating system software architecture to accommodate these changes. The Bloom ASIC was also the first product in the industry ever to offer hardware-based frame-level trunking for Fibre Channel fabrics, which provided unmatched throughput through guaranteed even load balancing across multiple "pipes", while maintaining reliable and in-order frame delivery.

In 2004, the BLOOM II improved on the previous ASIC design by reducing its cost, power-consumption, and die size, and it powered Brocade’s second generation director, the SilkWorm 24000. The SilkWorm 24000 supported up to 128 ports in a single domain and speeds of 2 Gbit/s across non-blocking ports. The new director also used approximately two thirds less power than it's predecessor. In this timeframe, Brocade also introduced many additional value-added software features, acquired Rhapsody Networks (a SAN virtualization startup), and delivered it's first multiprotocol Fibre Channel router, the SilkWorm 7420. This was also the timeframe in which Brocade first entered into the embedded switch market, delivering multiple switched fabric platforms fully integrated into OEM hardware for storage controllers and bladed server chassis.

In 2005, Gregory Reyes stepped down as CEO after being accused of backdating stock option grants. Approximately a year after investigating these allegations, the Department of Justice (DoJ) through the US Attorney’s Office, the SEC, and the FBI filed criminal and civil charges against Reyes. In roughly the same timeframe, the SEC, DoJ, and FBI also began investigating over 100 other companies for similar activities.

After Reyes left the company, Michael Klayko was named CEO in January 2005. Klayko had originally joined Brocade in 2004 as a result of the acquisition of Rhapsody Networks, where he served as its CEO and President. Starting in late 2005, Brocade rolled out a full range of 4 Gb switches, embedded switches, and directors based on the "Condor" ASIC. Brocade continued its innovation with the new director, the SilkWorm 48000. This director has up to 384 ports, offers speeds up to 4 Gbit/s, and introduces NPIV along with other feature enhancements.

These new products helped fuel the company’s steady revenue growth in 2006.

On January 29, 2007, Brocade completed its largest acquisition to date by acquiring McDATA Corporation, one of its leading competitors in the Fibre Channel switch and director market, and launched a corporate-wide rebranding effort.

The SilkWorm 12000 Director, first announced in March of 2001, quickly gained over one-third of the director market share after its release in 2002. During this initial growth in the director market, Brocade gained the confidence of some of the toughest customers in the world by bringing FICON and FICON CUP support to the 12000.

In 2003, the 12000 was named “Storage Product of the Year” by Computing, a European IT Publication. Before the SilkWorm 12000, McDATA, which would later be acquired by Brocade in early 2007, held over 90% market share in directors.

As of October 2005, Brocade had sold over 5.5 million ports and held nearly 50% of the overall market, over 60% of the switch market, and, with over 8000 directors sold, nearly 30% of the director market (Dell'Oro, October 2005).

Since its beginning in 1995, Brocade has authored more Fibre Channel standards than any other company and it continues its technical leadership today. (As of Oct 2005) Brocade employees hold leadership positions in some of the industry’s biggest standards groups, including the T11 Technical Committees (INCITS), the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), and the Data Management Task Force (DMTF).

1st Generation Products - 1997 to 1999

  • ASIC: Stitch
    • Ports: 2
  • Key Products: SilkWorm 1000

2nd Generation Products - 1999 to 2001

  • ASIC: LOOM
    • Speed: 1 Gbit/s
    • Ports: 4
  • Key Products: SilkWorm 2800, SilkWorm 6400

3rd Generation Products - 2001 to 2004

  • ASIC: BLOOM and BLOOM II
    • Speed: 2 Gbit/s
    • Ports: 8
    • Introduced ISL trunking (4-port groups called quads) and frame filtering
  • Key Products: SilkWorm 3800, SilkWorm 12000, SilkWorm 24000

4th Generation Products - 2004 to 2007

  • ASIC: Condor
    • Speed: 4 Gbit/s
    • Ports: 32
    • Introduced enhanced trunking (8-port groups)
    • Key Products: SilkWorm 4100, SilkWorm 48000 Director
  • ASIC: GoldenEye (scaled-down Condor)
    • Speed: 4 Gbit/s
    • Ports: 16
    • Key Products: SilkWorm 200E

Brocade’s major hardware products include award-winning fibre channel switches and directors. Other hardware solutions from Brocade support common protocols that include iSCSI, FCIP, GigE and FICON.

  • SAN Switches (1, 2, and 4 Gbit/s)
    • Brocade 5000 – Flexible switch with up to 32 ports
    • Brocade 4900 – High-density with up to 64 ports
    • Brocade 4100 – Up to 32 ports
    • Brocade 200E – Entry-level switch with up to 16 ports
    • Brocade M4700 – Entry-level switch with up to 16 ports
    • Brocade M4400 – Up to 16 ports
  • SAN Directors (1, 2, and 4 Gbit/s)
    • Brocade 48000 – up to 384 ports
    • Brocade Mi10K – up to 256 ports
    • Brocade M6140 – up to 140 ports

Brocade’s product portfolio also includes a suite of network and file management applications. Protocols Supported by Brocade Software includes SMB/CIFS and NFS

  • SAN Management Software
    • EFCM
    • Fabric Manager
    • Web Tools
  • SAN Application Modules
    • Application Resource Manager (ARM)
    • Data Migration Manager (DMM)

  • 2006
    • Brocade SAN Director Wins Gold for Storage Product of the Year
    • Big Bytes SAN Award for Brocade 4900
    • InfoStor MVP Award for the Brocade 48000
    • InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award: Mi10K
  • 2005
    • Search Storage Gold Award: Mi10K
    • Well-Connected Award: SANavigator
    • StorageX Wins Network Magazine Innovation Award
    • StorageX Earns "Excellent" Rating from Redmond Most Valuable Product Evaluation
    • Brocade Router Wins Best FC Product of the Year
  • 2004
    • Brocade MultiProtocol Router wins Product of the Year Award at Paris Data Storage Forum
  • 2003
    • Innovative Technology of the Year from ComputerWorld
    • Brocade 12000 Director wins Product of the Year Award at Paris Data Storage Forum
    • Brocade 3900 Chosen as Finalist in Datamation Product of the Year (Storage Category)
    • Brocade 3800 Finalist in Network Computing "Well Connected" Awards
  • 2002
    • Brocade Wins Product of the Year from Storage Magazine and Searchstorage.com

  • 2007 – McDATA. Key competitor in the Fibre Channel switch and director market.
  • 2007 – Silverback Systems, Inc. Provides network acceleration technologies.
  • 2006 – NuView, Inc. Develops software solutions for enterprise file data management.
  • 2005 – Therion Software Corporation
  • 2003 – Rhapsody Networks

Former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes and the former vice president of HR were charged with 12 counts of fraud relating to allegedly illegally backdating stock options.[1] Two counts were dismissed, and Reyes was tried and on August 7, 2007 was convicted on the remaining 10 counts.[2] He is to be sentenced on November 21, and faces 20 years in prison and a $5 million fine.

Stephanie Jensen, the former vice president of Human Resources, was convicted in a separate trial. The sentencing is scheduled for March 12, 2008. [3]

  1. ^ Gollner, Philipp. "Brocade trial seen as test for backdating cases", Reuters, 2007-08-02. Retrieved on 2007-08-03. 
  2. ^ Therese Poletti and Elise Ackerman, Ex-Brocade CEO Reyes guilty on all securities fraud counts, San Jose Mercury News
  3. ^ Robertson, Jordan. "Brocade exec guilty in stock option case", AP, 2007-12-05. Retrieved on 2007-12-05. 

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