With enterprise networks turning extremely agile, extensively automated and highly visible, Brocade’s George Chacko sheds light on Brocade’s new datacenter product offerings in an exclusive interview with Enterprise IT World.
Q1. What is the USP for Brocade’s new Datacenter Product Portfolio?
Brocade launched an expanded Brocade SLX family with new innovative switches that feature unparalleled network visibility and the addition of Brocade Workflow Composer Automation Suites for turnkey automation. This is the industry’s first data center networking portfolio to deliver agility at all layers of the data center stack, while being open to provide customers with choice.
Building on the routing solution that Brocade introduced in September, the new Brocade data center switches deliver flexible leaf, spine and edge connectivity while leveraging the Brocade SLX Insight Architecture. By embedding network visibility on every router and switch, organizations can achieve pervasive visibility throughout the network to quickly identify problems, accelerate mean-time-to-remediation and improve overall service levels.
New automation suites, including Network Essentials, Data Center Fabrics and Internet Exchange Points for the Brocade Workflow Composer platform, powered by StackStorm, provide automated network provisioning, validation, troubleshooting and remediation workflows. These automation suites are ideal for customers who want to jumpstart their automation journey with pre-built workflows to accelerate time-to-value.
Q2. Why is agility so critical in Enterprise operations today?
According to IDC, two-thirds of CEOs at Global 2000 companies will place digital transformation at the center of their corporate strategies by the end of 2017. CEOs recognize they must become a digital organization to accelerate the pace of innovation and drive competitive advantage or risk being displaced by nimbler competitors. Organizations that are going through digital transformation need networks that are extremely agile, extensively automated and highly visible. Fast innovation can only happen with an agile IT foundation where automation works seamlessly with network visibility while digitally connecting all IT domains and functions together to eliminate silos and deliver end-to-end automation.
Q3. What are your market plans for the new product portfolio in India?
The next gen data center product portfolio trails are happening in different parts of the world. The target customers are large enterprises and banks who have large data centers.
Q4. How do you see the Indian data center market fairing in the coming years?
The Indian data center market is buoyed by positive sentiments in the economy and the strong resurgence of growth-related projects across verticals such as banking, insurance, retail, manufacturing, telecom and government projects such as Digital India, Make in India and Smart Cities. Even emerging verticals like education, hospitality, healthcare and communications and media need customized data center solutions. Market opportunity for data centers in India continues to mature with the growing prevalence of 4G, broadband connectivity and emergence of disruptive technologies like cloud and virtualization. In the coming years, Indian enterprises will focus on building intelligent data centers that focus on optimizing existing hardware assets by adding additional software capabilities. Several factors such as physical location, types of applications supported, power and cooling, downtime, floor area will help determine an organizations’ tech investment plan.
