Brocade to offer comprehensive networking solns

SAN JOSE, USA & BANGALORE, INDIA: Powered by the recent acquisition of Foundry Networks, Brocade, a leader in data center networking solutions and services, is gearing up to offer a comprehensive IP and data center networking solutions portfolio with a significant investment in R&D activities in India.

The company has decided to double its head count in Bangalore and undertake full product development activities also. "We have planned to double the head count in Bangalore by adding another 130-140 researchers in 2009. The teams will be full fledged ones and take up projects right from inception to delivery level," Surya Turaga, Director, Engineering Operations, Brocade said.

The Brocade R&D center in Bangalore was set up in 2006 and has a headcount of 100+. The R&D teams in Bangalore work on cross multiple initiatives involving Storage application (fabric application), Data Centre Ethernet Application, Manageability Product, and ASIC design and testing.

Commenting on the emphasis for R&D activities during the recession period Parviz Ghalambor, VP, Engineering, Brocade said the company believed that R&D was backbone of the company and has been investing about 20 percent of its revues in the process. He said it makes sense to invest even higher in R&D activities during the recession as enterprises would look for new innovative products.

According to Ghalambor, about 60-70 percent of the company's revenue was coming from products developed during past 12-24 months. "This emphasizes that our efforts in R&D have quite paid off," he said.

For the first time, the company will be accommodating fresh college graduates in India for its R&D activities. Its recruiters are already looking for talents in college and at least 5 percent of the workforce will be fresh graduates. New R&D teams will have equal representation from levels of researchers.

Acquisition of Foundry Networks

On the acquisition of Foundry Networks, a performance and and total solutions leader for network switching and routing, Ghalambor said the takeover gives Brocade an unprecedented choice and flexibility by providing a comprehensive family of end-to-end networking solutions for the data center and beyond.

Ghalambor added that prior to the takeover, Foundry had no presence outside US as its model did not support worldwide presence. With the two companies coming together, there is now a broad offering of industry's most reliable, high-performance, and energy-efficient products developed by two of the most trusted names in networking.

Fiber Channel products

Ghalambor said that Brocade had a clear road map on introducing Fiber Channel products in the near future. He said that through the adaption of new technology was going to slow, the company has taken the product portfolio seriously.