Westcon Adds Brocade SAN To Data Center Lineup

The move adds to Westcon's Brocade footprint, which already includes an agreement to distribute Brocade's network infrastructure lineup, including Brocade's IP and Ethernet networking products. Westcon, in effect, now carries all the technologies underpinning Brocade's Brocade One data center architecture.

Westcon will incorporate Brocade products into its Learn, Experience, Architect and Plan (LEAP) training for VARs.

Overall, the Brocade products added to Westcon's distribution line as of this month include Brocade's 16 Gbps Fibre Channel backbones, switches and adapters, Brocade's VDX 6720 Data Center switches, Brocade's 8 Gbps Fibre Channel product portfolio, Brocade's SAN transceivers, and the Brocade Network Advisor, the company's unified network management offering for storage, application delivery, wireless and converged networks.

Westcon Group has a key global relationship with Cisco, whose products account for about half of Westcon's overall revenue via its Comstor unit. But that hasn't prevented Westcon from expanding its focus on storage- and networking-oriented vendors that compete with Cisco and other key Westcon partners like Avaya, as Brocade does.

"We're developing a worldwide relationship with Brocade," said Dean Douglas, Westcon Group's president and CEO. "We're not going to take on a bunch of new products and do all kinds of second-tier, low-end type things. We're working with a very focused set of companies."

Feedback from VARs and customers, Douglas said, has been positive for the Brocade One products and architecture.

"As you look at the flattening of the network, companies like Brocade become that much more important," Douglas said. "We think that's going on in many enterprises and we want to make sure we're able to be part of that."