Can Two Be One?

5:00 PM -- If accurate and interpreted correctly, market analysis can be illuminating. But when filtered through the eyes of vendors, it's often downright confusing.

Citing a Dell'Oro Group Fibre Channel SAN report, Brocade today claimed it was No. 1 in first-quarter market share in directors -- a segment where McData usually leads. (See Brocade Touts Leadership.} But, wait. Two weeks ago McData assured everybody it was still the king of gdirectors -- citing the same Dell'Oro Group report. (See McData Says It Keeps Director Lead.)

Instead of waiting for Cisco or even QLogic to make similar claims, we tracked down the Dell'Oro numbers to see who was really No. 1 in directors last quarter. Turns out, Brocade and McData are both half-right. Or half-wrong, depending on how you look at it.

McData was the revenue market share leader with 36.3 percent of overall worldwide revenue, compared to 32.6 percent for Brocade and 30.7 percent for Cisco. But Brocade held the port count lead worldwide, with 36.5 percent compared to McData's 32.3 percent and Cisco's 30.9 percent.

Of course, neither Brocade nor McData pointed out these distinctions in their statements.Brocade is certainly gaining ground in both categories, though. Over the last year it went from 29.9 percent to 36.5 percent in ports and from 26.2 percent to 32.6 percent in revenue. Like others in the industry, Dell'Oro attributes this at least in part to Brocade's being early to market with 4-Gbit/s gear. In contrast, McData's port share slipped from 35.1 percent to 32.3 percent while its revenue ticked up from 35.5 percent to 36.3 percent since last year.

And where's Cisco on the charts? According to Dell'Oro, Cisco gained from 29.4 percent to 30.9 percent in ports but slipped in revenue share from 31.4 percent to 30.7 percent over the last year. That includes a 9 percent drop in revenue between the fourth quarter of 2005 and the first quarter of 2006, possibly because Cisco was slow to come out with its new 528-port 4-Gbit/s director. (See Cisco 4-Gbit Director MIA and Cisco Goes 4-Gig & Big.)

Dave Raffo, News Editor, Byte and Switch

Organizations mentioned in this article: