Bullish Brocade claims campus LAN leadership

Vendor opens doors on demo centre for UK clients and partners and claims new products represent "most radical changes to how we look at campus in 10 years"

Brocade aims to help partners ramp up sales after opening doors on its EMEA Innovation Centre and unveiling what it claims is the most significant development in campus networking in 10 years.

The storage and networking vendor has operated an Innovation Centre at its California headquarters since moving into new digs 18 months ago. The facility is designed to show off the vendor's technology and expertise to customers.

Brocade chief marketing officer John McHugh told ChannelWeb that the vendor's deal closure rate for potential clients passing through the San Jose site is 80 per cent. He added that he expects 250-300 end users to visit newly opened Bracknell site each year.

"In EMEA we are almost exclusively partner-driven. So, the way that the centre [has been] designed and structured, we will always expect partners to be involved," added McHugh. "We are also really focused on multi-vendor solutions. We bring in customers, we bring in technology partners, and we collaboratively come to conclusions about what solutions should look like."

Brocade also recently unveiled its Effortless Network campus LAN technology, and McHugh reckons his firm's vision is going to shake up the campus arena. The Effortless architecture is based around the vendor's HyperEdge technology, which aims to bring increased automation to the campus LAN world.

The vendor also claims to have created the industry's most flexible and scalable campus network, and two additions to its ICX family of switches were also unveiled as part of the Effortless launch. McHugh characterised Effortless as a "major contribution to the industry".

"This is the most radical change to the way we look at the campus in the last 10 years," he added. "We have created economies around upgrades and scale. We believe no product in the industry can touch this."