Brocade Expands Data Center Networking Solutions to Accelerate Digital Transformation

Brocade today announced the expansion of the Brocade® SLX® Series with new innovative switches that deliver unparalleled network visibility and the addition of Brocade Workflow Composer™ Automation Suite as a turnkey automation suite. This is the industry's first data center networking portfolio that enables agility at all layers of the data center stack while providing customers with a variety of choices through openness. With Brocade products, enterprise organizations can build networks that help them quickly adapt to technology transitions, deliver new services at the speed of the cloud, and accelerate digital transformation.

Leveraging the Brocade SLX Insight Architecture™, the new Brocade SLX 9140, SLX 9240, and SLX 9540 data center switches, built on the Brocade SLX 9850 routing solution introduced in September, deliver flexible leaf, spine, and edge connectivity. By embedding network visibility into every router and switch, organizations can gain pervasive visibility across the entire network to quickly identify problems, accelerate mean time to repair, and improve overall service levels. The Brocade SLX 9140 and 9240 extend these capabilities through a programmable ASIC that delivers visibility services from the physical wire to the virtual network and workloads.

The new automation kits with 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 start their automation journey with a pre-built process to accelerate time to value. Brocade Workflow Composer, launched earlier this year, is a server-based, DevOps-style network automation platform that integrates across IT domains to enable end-to-end workflow automation.

According to IDC data, by the end of 2017, two-thirds of CEOs of the world's top 2000 companies put digital transformation at the core of their corporate strategy. CEOs realize that they must become digital enterprises to accelerate the pace of innovation and improve competitive advantage, otherwise they will face the risk of being replaced by more flexible competitors. Only with an agile IT foundation can rapid innovation be carried out. In this IT environment, automation seamlessly supports network visibility and can digitally connect all IT domains and functions to eliminate silos and achieve end-to-end automation.

“Organizations undergoing digital transformation require an extremely agile, massively automated, and highly visible network,” said Jason Nolet, senior vice president, Switching, Routing and Analytics Products Group, Brocade. “The deep and broad flexibility and agility that Brocade provides differentiates us from other network providers. We enable digital transformation vertically across the entire data center stack and horizontally across domains in the data center—all while being open at every layer.”

Brocade SLX Series Enhancements

• The new Brocade SLX 9140 Leaf Switch provides 48 native 25 GbE server-facing ports and 6 100 GbE ports in a 1U fixed form factor. It also features flexible 1/10/25/40/100 GbE configuration options.

• The new Brocade SLX 9240 spine switch provides a high-density 32 100 GbE ports in a 1U fixed form factor.

• Both the Brocade SLX 9140 and SLX 9240 switches feature the first-of-its-kind programmable ASIC, enabling Brocade to rapidly deliver new capabilities through software. This eliminates costly forklift upgrades as customers introduce new technologies and protocols into their environments. The ASICs are based on the Brocade SLX Insight Architecture, an open kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) environment that can run third-party and customer-specific monitoring, troubleshooting, and analytics applications, providing insights into virtual networks and workloads by adding visibility services. Actions can be taken within the switch or through applications and tools outside the switch, such as Splunk or Brocade Workflow Composer.

• The Brocade SLX 9540 switch delivers carrier-class features in a cost-effective 1 RU fixed form factor optimized for data center interconnect, WAN edge, and Internet exchange point deployments. It offers 48 10 GbE ports and 6 100 GbE ports.

Brocade Workflow Composer Automation Suite

Designed to run with the Brocade Workflow Composer platform, Brocade Automation Suites are ideal for IT organizations that want to embrace automation but have limited automation development skills and resources. The suites provide out-of-the-box network lifecycle automation for frequently performed tasks and can be packaged to address key use cases. Each automation suite includes documentation and a set of turnkey, customizable workflows, services, sensors, actions, and rules. Customers can use Brocade Automation Suites as is, or as a starter kit to build or customize workflows specific to their data center needs, accelerating time to value.

Supportive comments

• “Enterprises want to build data center networks that emulate the networking giants, but they often lack the internal expertise and resources to implement such networks and operate them effectively. As a result, they turn to trusted vendors as their primary partners who can provide them with technology that is easy to use, deploy, and manage. Brocade's approach of embedding visibility into switches, coupled with enhanced automation and programmability, can help enterprises transform their networks to align with their digital transformation initiatives.” - Brad Casemore, research director, Data Center Networks, IDC

• "Brocade's new Digital Center portfolio will provide us with enhanced network visibility from infrastructure to applications and the agility we need to support our customers' changing expectations in our dynamic environment." - Luke Norris, CEO, Faction

• “On SwissIX’s Internet Exchange platform, we must be able to quickly deliver increasing bandwidth and new interconnect services at a very low price. We are excited to begin testing the Brocade SLX 9540, Brocade Workflow Composer Automation Suite, and to be able to cost-effectively scale bandwidth and service capabilities while helping us support service agility for network operations.” – Matthias Cramer, Member of the Board of Directors, SwissIX

Sales

The Brocade SLX 9140 and SLX 9240 are currently scheduled to be available for order in January 2017. The Brocade SLX 9540 is available for ordering today. All switches are scheduled to be generally available in April 2017. Brocade Workflow Composer is generally available today. The new automation suite will be available in preview in December 2016 and is scheduled to be generally available in February 2017.