Cisco And Brocade Join Forces For Technology Development Agreement.

Cisco Systems and Brocade Communications Systems' new technology development agreement will enable customers to interconnect SANs (Storage Area Networks) over Internet Protocol (IP)-based metropolitan and Wide Area Network infrastructures. The Cisco/Brocade agreement will facilitate the interconnection of islands of SANs over IP-based Metropolitan Area Network (MAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN) infrastructures. It will enable the deployment of SANs spanning remote physical locations and make possible types of SAN applications that could not be implemented over distances, including disaster recovery, remote data replication, remote data backup, and digital content distribution.

In the first phase of the technology agreement, the two companies will develop a Fibre Channel interface for Cisco's Catalyst 6000 family of multi- layer switches. In addition, Brocade and Cisco will certify the interoperability between Brocade SilkWorm Fibre Channel fabric switches with Cisco Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) products, which will enable SAN-to-SAN connectivity over fiber optic MANs.

Cisco and Brocade have also agreed to develop switch-to-switch connection products in the future to expand customers' options for connecting Brocade Fibre Channel-based SANs across Cisco networking infrastructures, supporting a variety of network interfaces. All products resulting from this agreement will be compliant with ANSI T11 standards.