SME the next pit-stop for SAN technology

SAN switch specialists Brocade are going after the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) segment. However, they also have a new initiative, a Router, for the Medium-Large segment that allows SAN to SAN connections.

"Brocade will now target the SME Storage Area Network (SAN) sector with the SilkWorm 3250 and 3850," said Tom Buiocchi, Vice President Customer Marketing, Brocade at the launch of the SilkWorm Series. He justified Brocade's new stand by means of a chart that showed a growth rate of 300 percent in the segment.

As the IT focus transits to consolidation of data, the small businesses seem ready to invest in "My first SAN," says Deb Dutta, Brocade Managing Director Asia Pacific. These businesses are too small to afford a full scale SAN and yet are big enough to require one, with around four to six servers across their business. This is perhaps why Brocade has created a small, relatively inexpensive and easy to install system.

In the medium-large segment, companies "already have SAN islands that are discrete and isolated," Buiocchi analyzed. This segment, apparently, is on the lookout to establish a selective and secure connection between SANs without actually merging them. For them Brocade launched the Silkworm MultiProtocol Router. A router that provides FC to FC routing, iSCSI gateway service and does FCIP conversion internally.