30 Minute Interview

“The SMB segment presents a big opportunity for Brocade”

Deb Dutta Vice-president Brocade Communications Singapore

Brocade has just entered storage-related professional services. What was the rationale behind this move?

We recently ventured into professional services to help customers tackle storage complexity issues. Our professional services portfolio comprises SAN design and architecture assessment, Wide Area File Services optimisation, MetaSAN integration, and SAN Life Services offerings.

The aim of our customers is to fully utilise their existing storage without going in for additional tiers. It is important for customers to ensure that their storage seamlessly integrates with other heterogeneous storage boxes in a given architecture. The storage needs of organisations are growing every day, and there are various storage brands that exist within a given storage architecture or environment.

Regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act compel organisations to go in for ILM (Information Lifecycle Management). An ILM strategy needs to be properly formulated, with the aim being to simplify storage architecture. Keeping in mind the above scenario, we felt that our customers needed professional services as they do not have the expertise to solve complex storage problems and are hence always on the lookout for specialised services from storage vendors. We expect to find a lot of takers for professional services in storage in India.

You have recently decided to focus aggressively on the SMB space. What is your strategy to tap the same?

SMBs present a big opportunity for Brocade. The SMB market needs cost-effective solutions that are easy to deploy and manage. SMBs don’t have the required skill-sets to deploy and maintain storage infrastructure, therefore they demand support services which we can readily provide directly or through partners. Considering these factors, many of our partners are already offering different flavours of SMB SAN storage using Brocade SAN switches in India.

Can you shed light on the new Tapestry solution and the SAN connectivity platforms which Brocade launched a while ago?

We have recently announced a new plug-and-play data migration solution and an enhanced platform for consolidating SAN environments for enhancing IT’s efficacy in different business environments. The Brocade Tapestry Data Migration Manager is a data migration solution designed to provide simple, fast and deterministic migration of data across heterogeneous storage devices residing on a SAN. We have also announced a new release of the Brocade SilkWorm

Multi-Protocol Router designed to feature inter-operability with directors and switches and provide robust support for SAN distance extensions over Wide Area Networks.

The Brocade Conference is being held for the first time in the Asia Pacific/Japan region. What prompted this step?

We will continue to host the Brocade Conference in the United States, but this year, for the first time, it is being held in the Asia Pacific/Japan region. The nine-city event will be hosted by Mumbai, Singapore, Shanghai, Sydney, Beijing, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei and Hong Kong. The aim of the conference is to bring together major players in the Asia Pacific storage industry. Many enterprise storage majors such as EMC, HDS, HP and IBM are supporting the conference which is aimed at SAN end-users and industry professionals. It will also showcase SAN solutions with Brocade technology and provide insights into the latest SAN technology and trends. There will also be dedicated technical training and how-to sessions by Brocade and other SAN providers aimed at storage administrators focussing on SAN solutions, design and their management.

—Abhinav Singh