No Hot Seat, No Throne

6:10 PM -- Rewind the tape with me a sec, back to the end of last year. (See 2005 Top Ten: On the Hot Seat.)

As alert reader and message board poster, SANtaClaws, points out, Byte and Switch put Brocade at the top of our list of companies in the hot seat. (See Nice one, Raffo.)

As opinions or predictions go, this wasn't one of our most audacious. Personally, I preferred the idea we put forth about the same time that Network Appliance would get acquired in 2006 (at last glance, NetApp was still very independent). Perhaps not very audacious, just really off base.

The choice of Brocade wasn't even close -- between executive turmoil, a DOJ investigation, and earnings that seemed to have stalled, the first few quarters of 2006 would test even the most battle-tested of vendors.

We weren't writing off Brocade in December. Still, despite what SANtaClaws posted, we get the difference between being in the hot seat and disappearing down the toilet. And in fact, the company's recent revenues turnaround is good news for the entire storage industry, given the uneven performance of other storage bellwethers this quarter. (See Brocade Boasts Big Quarter, EMC Hiccups, Waits for Clariion, and Storage Financials Take a Dip.)But before anyone declares Brocade out of the woods, let's also remember those investigators haven't closed the books yet. And as for its earnings picture, we'll see what its next quarter looks like. The advantage it's enjoyed being early to market with 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel gear will almost certainly disappear now that Cisco and McData have finally embraced 4-gig.

While Brocade can be commended for its successful stabilization, the hard part -- whether in Fibre Channel or prediction making -- is sustaining the momentum.

Terry Sweeney, Editor in Chief, Byte and Switch

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