QLogic and Cisco Enter Technology Alliance

QLogic Corp. and Cisco Systems have entered into an alliance.

“Cisco’s goal in storage networking is to combine the best aspects of existing and emerging technologies to deliver the most practical and effective solutions for customers,” said Soni Jiandani, vice president of Marketing in Cisco’s Storage Technology Group. “By working with companies such as QLogic, we are able to take advantage of the core competencies of both companies, which enables us to advance storage networking much faster for our customers.”

“Ethernet switch fabrics are the dominant infrastructure for data networks. Providing a vehicle for file transfer, they already play an important storage role in connecting application servers to file servers and network attached storage,” said James Opfer, Gartner Dataquest. “Just as Ethernet is dominant for data networks, Fibre Channel stands alone as the incumbent technology for block-level transfers in SANs. With Fibre Channel entrenched in the SAN space and Ethernet ubiquitous and familiar, Fibre Channel and Ethernet fabric solutions incorporating PCI-based host bus adapters have a credible evolution path.”

The alliance includes agreements to integrate QLogic technology and components into Cisco systems storage networking products, marketing of solutions, and joint interoperability testing.