Jason Nolet, Brocade, at EMC World 2013 with John Furrier and Stu Miniman Jason Nolet, VP Data Center Networking, Brocade, discussed the company's take on Ethernet fabric solutions, fiber channels and current trends in the storage space with theCube co-hosts John Furrier and Stu Miniman, live at EMC World 2013. Talking about the company's recent developments, Nolet mentioned the acceleration of adoption of their Ethernet fabric solution, which has now reached 1300 customers. One of the most prominent customer segments for this solutions include public cloud providers. Nolet says that such customers look at the stack of solutions and see providers who can't really differentiate themselves. On the other hand, Ethernet is evolving in a world where fiber still holds quite a strong position. In regards to software-defined networking, it "may be coming out of the hype cycle" and some solutions will soon be available in the market. Other than the long-standing partnership with EMC (over 15 years), Brocade is also teamed up with VMware. "We are believers in network virtualization," Nolet explained. As far as the EMC partnership is concerned, he pointed out customer demand for fiber channels is still growing, and that is where the collaboration will be focused. The two companies are also working on offerings where Brocade can implement its Ethernet fabric solution. Bleeding edge networking solutions Asked how the company gets its customers to see the value of Ethernet fabric solutions, Nolet said the company is going after early adopters. It is an innovative technology, an architectural cell. "We see a lot of success with customers who want to innovate into the data center". He also added that Brocade has a massive fiber channel customer base, and will be open to Ethernet solutions for as long as the company sees loyalty here. "We've chosen a technology in our product offering that is very, very focused, but also highly contrasting with other offerings in the space," Nolet said. Crafting an open source strategy Asked about open source communities, Nolet explained that "when you start to engage open source communities, you have to have a development strategy." The acquisition of Vyatta helped Brocade better understand the open source space. Speaking of software development, he also notes that customers need to figure how to up-level their expertise. It's going to be the application developers who are going to have the expertise required, as there is going to be a skill set change in the IT shops. The commonality between SAN and Ethernet, Nolet said, is that both need to be managed at a higher level. A large SAN installation base wants to migrate into a cloud-based architecture, he added. All the data storage assets — customers want it all live in the cloud environment. Curbing competition, building converged infrastructures Asked to comment about Cisco's decision to launch their 16 GB fiber channel, two years after Brocade, Nolet said Cisco had a heavy agenda to convince customers to move to Ethernet. As fiber is still the dominant storage technology, customers have spoken and Cisco needed to come up with a 16 GB channel. "We do a fair share of adoption of converged infrastructures," Nolet stated. It continues to be a theme, but reference architecture with choice is preferred by customers. Pointing out a future development, he explained that "the entire data center evolves to be virtualized and abstracted." The physical infrastructure needs to evolve to support a level of virtualization and abstraction. Brocade is planning on working with network virtualization providers to make Ethernet the best network for the physical infrastructure.