Next Two Fiscal Quarters Bode Well for Brocade

Brocade Communications Systems this week unleashed a flurry of news from the comfort of its own conference in Las Vegas. But perhaps what investors were most interested in hearing about from the San Jose, Calif. storage infrastructure provider was its fiscal guidance.

This the firm readily supplied at the Brocade Conference 2002 in Las Vegas, when it said it was on track to meet third- and fourth-quarter estimates. The firm, which makes such products as fabric switches for storage area networks (SANs) , said earnings are expected to be 8 cents a share on revenue of $145 million to $150 million for the quarter ending in July. Looking forward even further, the outfit expects business to improve as the high-tech sector continues to rebound: Brocade said it is in line to earn 10 cents a share on sales of $160 million to $165 million.

As a maker of both storage hardware and software products, Brocade is a bit of a bellwether in the storage industry, particularly as a purveyor of SAN technologies.

But next to touting its financial security, Brocade was busy announcing not new products, but additional partners and programs. The company launched a broad partner program to move businesses from direct-attached to networked storage, with Hewlett-Packard as the featured member; coaxed other partners to show off its storage area network software to attendees; and expanded previous partnerships with high-profile storage software makers Computer Associates and BMC Software .

The new Brocade Qualified Support Partner (QSP) program is designed to accelerate companies' migration from direct-attached to networked storage by training services partners to provide SAN expertise, labs, and service and support response. In this endeavor, for which financial terms were not revealed, HP will be the first Brocade QSP at the premier level, delivering heterogeneous SAN upgrade and migration planning, onsite repair and replacement, and support to SAN customers the world over. More than 300 HP employees will become versed in Brocade's products.

At the conference Tuesday, Brocade said its application partners will be showcasing SAN management and storage virtualization products that leverage the its Fabric Access Application Programming Interface (API). At a recognition ceremony held during the conference, Brocade partners BMC Software, Computer Associates, InterSAN, Invio Software, Netreon, Prisa Networks, Sun Microsystems, and VERITAS Software -- will be acknowledged for delivering SAN management applications that are optimized for Brocade SAN infrastructure.

As far as partner expansions, BMC's PATROL Storage Management software will now support the entire 2 Gigabit per Second (Gbit/sec) SilkWorm product line, including the SilkWorm 3200 8-port Entry Fabric Switch, the SilkWorm 3800 16-port Enterprise Fabric Switch, and the SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric Switch.

Brocade also said it has reached new heights of interoperability with CA's products. Brocade's SilkWorm 2400, 2800, 3200, and 3800 fabric switches, have been certified "ca smart" with the Serverless Backup Options and SAN Options of CA's BrightStor ARCserve Backup and BrightStor Enterprise Backup software.

The "ca smart seal" is earned by partners who deliver value and technical excellence through the compatibility of their products with CA's technologies.