Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD), a provider of infrastructure for Storage Area Networks (SANs), announced that new industry research by Gartner Dataquest now estimates that the market opportunity for SAN infrastructure will exceed $16.8 billion by 2005. The new Dataquest report by the analyst research firm more than doubles the last estimates of the 2003 market for SAN infrastructure, which comprises Fibre Channel hubs, switches, integrated switches, high availability core products, and host-bus adapters (HBAs).
Of the new market segmentation, Dataquest estimates that the "high availability core switching products" segment, which includes products such as the Brocade SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric Switch, will be the fastest growing opportunity and reach more than $6 billion by 2005, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 100 percent. Dataquest also estimated that the overall fabric switch market, which includes fabric switches such as the Brocade SilkWorm 8-port 2400 and 16-port 2800 products, will be the second fastest growing segment, reaching nearly $5 billion by 2005, with a CAGR of 60 percent. In addition, Dataquest ranked the market for integrated switches, such as the Brocade SilkWorm 6400 Integrated Fabric Switch, as the third fastest growing switching segment, estimated to reach nearly $1 billion by 2005.
"The new market research by Dataquest reflects two trends: the massive shift to external storage, and the fact that an increasing portion of this external storage will be connected to servers in storage area networks. In fact, by 2005 Dataquest forecasts that 72 percent of the world's external storage, estimated to be more than 3.8 million terabytes in 2005, will be SAN-attached," said James Opfer, Principal Analyst, Gartner Dataquest Storage Group.
Brocade SilkWorm fabric switches provide an intelligent networking foundation for storage area networks. Using Brocade switches, customers can connect servers with storage devices through a SAN, creating a highly reliable, manageable, scalable, and secure environment for storage applications. With approximately 900,000 Gigabit Fibre Channel ports shipped to date, Brocade is a provider of SAN infrastructure, with more than four times the installed base of its nearest market segment competitor.
The Brocade Intelligent Fabric Services Architecture defines a networking foundation to support the requirements of next-generation enterprise storage applications, such as resource optimization through server and storage consolidation; simplified management through storage virtualization and centralized management; and high availability architectures such as server clustering and data replication for disaster recovery. Together, the Brocade SilkWorm family of fabric switches-including the new Brocade SilkWorm 12000 modular, multi-protocol Core Fabric Switch-and the Brocade Fabric Operating System (Fabric OS) form the industry standard for next-generation enterprise-class SANs. The Brocade Intelligent Fabric Services Architecture comprises a family of multi-protocol switching platforms and an intelligent software platform. The software platform includes intelligent fabric services that increase performance in the storage network and enable new applications; a comprehensive suite of security features that secure the SAN fabric from unauthorized access; and an open fabric management interface that simplifies the management of large SANs.
About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.:
Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) offers an intelligent platform for networking storage for systems, applications and storage vendors. For more information, visit www.brocade.com.