Brocade Raises FCoE Questions

On Tuesday, Brocade unveiled an end-to-end FCoE/CEE product family consisting of host adapters and switches. We may need a time-lapse camera to measure the slow pace of the upcoming race for converged network market share, but Brocade is now officially positioned at the starting gate.

Now that Brocade has joined Cisco, Emulex, and QLogic in spending millions of dollars developing new products, I asked myself if acceptance of this technology is a slam-dunk. My girlfriend Janene reminded me that if she needs my opinion she'll give it to me and that I should poll storage companies and the Byte and Switch readership to find out if there is industry consensus.

In response to Janene's challenge, I invited executives at several leading vendors to answer the following three questions:

1) With FCoE, do you believe the storage industry is finally moving to converge on Ethernet?

2) How is your company positioned to succeed in this transition?3) In what year does converged network storage become mainstream?

Please post your response today using the link below. Read my write-up of HP's response on Monday.

InformationWeek Analytics has published an independent analysis of the challenges around enterprise storage. Download the report here (registration required).

Frank Berry is CEO of IT Brand Pulse, a company that surveys enterprise IT managers about their perceptions of vendors and their products. Berry is a 30 year veteran of the IT industry, including senior executive positions with QLogic and Quantum.