Brocade Launches New Agile Data Center Portfolio to Help Enterprises Transform Digitally

[51CTO.com original article] In 1992, Andrew Grove wrote a sentence in Intel's annual report: "There are only two kinds of companies in the world: those that change quickly, and those that are dead." Currently, more and more companies are using emerging technologies such as cloud computing and big data analysis to solve problems. Especially new Internet companies, they have no existing baggage, and they use new technologies and revolutionary business models to quickly attract a large number of users, seize the market, and deal a heavy blow to those traditional industries that are slow to respond.

Today, we are in an era of digital transformation. If companies do not want to die, they must change. Looking back at 2016, which is about to pass, digital transformation is undoubtedly an important keyword in China's enterprise IT market. Through digital technology connections, the more companies embrace Internet technology, the higher their profits will be. Corporate executives have realized that digital transformation will bring disruptive changes to their companies, but how to transform is a big problem.

Recently, Gu Zengyun, technical manager of Brocade China, said in an interview with reporters that the digital transformation of enterprises urgently needs technology-driven business strategies, agile IT to improve the agility of infrastructure, and unified manpower, processes and policies. In order to help enterprises quickly adapt to technology transition, deliver new services at the speed of the cloud and accelerate the digital transformation of the network. On December 7, 2016, Brocade announced the launch of a new agile next-generation data center product portfolio, further expanding the Brocade SLX series, adding innovative switches with network visibility, and adding Brocade Workflow Composer as a turnkey automation suite. The product portfolio achieves agility at all layers of the data center stack, providing enterprises with enhanced network visibility from infrastructure to applications, helping enterprises support service agility for network operations.

So, what does the next-generation data center product portfolio include? Based on the SLX 9850 routing solution launched by Brocade in September 2016, Brocade has developed the new adaptable fixed data center switches SLX 9140 and SLX 9240, as well as the cost-effective, high-density, high-performance, and versatile data center switch SLX 9540. All three switches can provide flexible Leaf, Spine, and edge connections. By embedding network visibility in every router and switch, enterprises can achieve universal visibility across the entire network to quickly identify problems, speed up mean time to repair, and improve overall service levels. Brocade SLX 9140 and 9240 switches have similar functions, which are expanded through a programmable ASIC that provides visibility services from physical cables to virtual networks and loads to meet the evolving needs of enterprise and cloud data centers. The SLX 9540 switch is mainly placed in the egress position and is suitable for data center interconnection, WAN edge, and Internet exchange connections in the digital era.

In addition, new automation kits powered by StackStorm, including Network Essentials, Data Center Fabric, and Internet Exchange Points for Brocade Workflow Composer, provide automated network configuration, validation, troubleshooting, and remediation workflows. These automation kits are ideal for customers who want to get started on their automation journey with a pre-built process to accelerate time to value.

Gu Zengyun said that customers need agility at all levels. Visibility is the foundation of automation and agility, and automation is a prerequisite for achieving network agility. Brocade's data center product portfolio realizes agility requirements at all levels and can help enterprises improve agility from three aspects: DevOps-inspired automation, embedded network visibility, and adaptive platform flexibility.

DevOps-inspired automation: The Brocade Workflow Composer platform and automation suite increase IT agility and accelerate innovation through cross-domain event-driven automation.

Embedded Network Visibility: Brocade SLX Insight Architecture and Visibility Services enable visibility from the wire to the workload, enabling pervasive real-time monitoring and automated actions.

Adaptable platform flexibility: The Brocade SLX portfolio delivers agility at all levels of the data center stack through programmable ASICs, open APIs, and a design that adapts to emerging speeds, standards, and protocols.

During the interview, Gu Zengyun also introduced the automation suite Brocade Workflow Composer (hereinafter referred to as BWC) to reporters. He said that BWC provides automation and integrated cross-domain workflow capabilities throughout the entire life cycle of network services. He also emphasized that the architecture of BWC is a completely closed-loop automation, which enables the platform to handle the entire process of all network services from deployment to operation and maintenance. The cross-domain working capability enables it to complete collaboration among most mainstream cloud platforms including Microsoft, Red Hat, VMware, AWS, Openstack, Docker, etc.

At the end of the interview, Gu Zengyun said that the Brocade SLX 9140 and SLX 9240 switches are expected to go on sale in January 2017, and the Brocade SLX 9540 switch and automation suite Brocade Workflow Composer are now available for sale.

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