Brocade and McDATA; a marriage made in heaven?

So as everyone is probably aware, Brocade are buying McDATA for a shedload of shares; around $713m for the entire company. That values each share at $4.61, so no surprise McDATA shares are up and Brocade’s are down. It looks like McDATA is the poorer partner and Brocade have just bought themselves a set of new customers.

I liked McDATA; the earlier products up to the 6140 product line were great. Unfortunately the i10K for me set their demise. It created a brand new product line with no backward compatibility. It was slow to market, OEM vendors took forever to certify it. Then there was the design – physical blade swap out for 4GB; no paddle replacement; a separate box for routing; all the product operating systems are different between the routing, legacy and i10K products. Moving forward, where’s the smaller i10K model like a 128 or 64 port version?

The purchase of Sanera and CNT didn’t appear to go well; the product roadmap lacked strategy.

So, time to talk to my new friends at Brocade, I bet they’ve got a smile on their face today…

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