Brocade simplifies migration of services to the cloud

Brocade believes the networking industry is entering a major innovation cycle

Brocade has launched a unifying network architecture system called Brocade One that it claims will simplify networks by removing layers and easing the migration of services and information to the cloud.

The firm said that the product will enable organisations to evolve networks to create highly virtualised on-demand platforms based on simpler network architectures.

Brocade One provides simplistic deployment and configuration, and high-availability coverage, to meet rapidly growing demands for continuous operations, ease of management and resiliency, the firm said.

Brocade chief executive Mike Klayko argued that the networking industry is " on the cusp of a major innovation cycle" owing to huge growth in data and connected devices and the evolution of server virtualisation.

"Virtualised datacentres will enable the realisation of cloud architectures where services and applications can be delivered on demand and at much greater speeds than is possible today," he said.

Brocade will also help enterprises protect existing investments by building on top of existing multi-vendor infrastructures, rather than adopting a rip-and-replace approach.

The company made the announcements at its Tech Day event in New York, at which it unveiled a series of fabric-based innovations designed to simplify network architectures.

These included Virtual Cluster Switching technology designed to overcome the limitations of conventional Ethernet networking by applying non-stop operations and offering any-to-any connectivity.

Virtual Access Layer, meanwhile, provides a layer between Brocade's converged fabric and hypervisors, also known as virtual machine monitors, to ensure a consistent interface and services for virtual machines on the network.

Brocade explained that it had designed the Virtual Access Layer to be vendor-agnostic in order to support all major hypervisors, and to use industry standards including Virtual Ethernet Port Aggregator and Virtual Ethernet Bridging.

The firm also announced multi-protocol support for converged fabrics to enable the transportation of all types of network and storage traffic over a single wire to reduce complexity and provide a simplified migration path from current technologies.

Lastly, Brocade said that the new offerings are built around network standards to ensure full interoperability with its existing 8000 Fibre Channel over Ethernet Switch and Converged Network Adapters.