Brocade Positioned in “Visionaries” Quadrant on Gartner Magic Quadrant

Brocade today announced it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the "Visionaries" quadrant in the 2013 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Network Infrastructure report.

According to Gartner, vendors placed in the Visionaries quadrant have "demonstrated an ability to increase the features in their offerings, to provide a unique and differentiated approach to the market. A Visionary has innovated in one or more of the key areas of data center infrastructure, such as management (including virtualization), security (including policy enforcement), SDN and operational efficiency, as well as cost reductions."

Newly introduced in 2013, the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Network Infrastructure closely examines how the market has been transformed with new architectures, new technologies and vendors specifically targeting solutions to address the changing size and density of the data center, shifts in traffic patterns and the increasing requirement to simplify network operations.

For data center networks, it is imperative to focus on functional requirements, as opposed to debating emerging standards. Key criteria to consider include:

• Simply and seamlessly add bandwidth via links and nodes.

• Instantiate services (Layer 2, Layer 3 and above) at any point within the network.

• Have consistent and homogeneous capabilities across the fabric.

• Implement the fabric in such a way as to simplify ongoing management and operations.

• Support performance that can cost-effectively scale down as well as up."