"We believe that the addition of this capability represents a new major software revenue opportunity for Brocade's OEMs and application partners, who have identified their intent to migrate certain applications that will run more efficiently in the fabric," Reyes said. That is definitely language EMC and IBM understand.
Rhapsody's system was built from the ground up as an open platform able to run software from Veritas Software Corp. (Nasdaq: VRTS) and any other vendor that writes to its APIs. Cisco, on the other hand, has been working most closely with Veritas, and from what we can tell it hasn't had a very easy time of integrating software into the Andiamo switch. (Cisco, however, claims the Andiamo platform will be open to third-party applications as well. See Andiamo Loses Ground.)
Another point in Brocade's favor is that Cisco doesn't have any kind of track record in delivering SAN infrastructure. It's starting from square one. As one industry analyst told me, "Cisco doesn't even know how to spell storage." Hmmm... maybe storridge?
Nick Allen, research director at Gartner Inc., believes Rhapsody could actually get Brocade to market with an intelligent FC switch ahead of Cisco. His expectation is that Brocade will eventually incorporate Rhapsody's technology as a blade in the SilkWorm 12000, and that the company is being conservative when it says it won't see meaningful revenue from Rhapsody for two years.
Meanwhile, "Cisco has to prove the product works," he says. "Let's assume that it behaves like most other products and takes a while to qualify... It will be the middle of 2003 before it's proven it can interoperate and not have a gazillion problems." By contrast, Allen notes, Rhapsody says it has been in advanced testing with several storage vendors. Brocade claims it will announce OEMs for the Rhapsody platform sometime before the end of this year.
Bob Friday, Chief AI Officer for Juniper Networks, explains how the advanced technology is transforming operations.
Contact center leaders from 8x8, Awaken Intelligence, and 360insight discuss the importance of agent experience.
AI may force enterprises to rewire parts of their data centers so they are fully optimized to run such workloads. The question is do you use Ethernet or InfiniBand?
