Brocade Revolutionizes IT Economics With
Subscription-Based Pricing for Network Infrastructure
Brocade Network Subscription Enables Customers to Align Network Investments With Actual Usage But Without Capital Expenditures
Singapore – September 1, 2011 – Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced the availability of an innovative, subscription-basedacquisition option for network infrastructure that allows organizations to align network capacity with fluctuating business demands. Brocade® Network Subscription is optimized to address the unique requirements of cloud-based IT environments and represents a viable new procurement alternative that offers customers the most flexible,open-ended network acquisition option available today.
Brocade Network Subscription revolutionizes network acquisition by giving customers the flexibility to scale up and down according to actual network utilization with minimal risk and no capital outlay. With Brocade Network Subscription, customers pay for their network infrastructure on a monthly basis, allowing them to align network capacity with actual usage and thereby reducing costs and mitigating capital risk. Additionally, the open-ended structure of Brocade Network Subscription affords organizations a new level of flexibility in managing their technology assets, such as the ability to refresh network technology outside of traditional purchase cycles.
This unprecedented level of risk mitigation and flexibility makes Brocade Network Subscription an attractive option for enterprises, service providers and government entities that are faced with budget constraints or are looking for more predictable expense management.
“The challenge facing IT organizations today is that new technologies such as cloud computing are coming to the fore and are making it much more difficult to project and predict workloads. A flexible acquisition option like Brocade Network Subscription enables organizations to add and reconfigure resources in a much more compacted time frame,” said Joe Pucciarelli, Program Director of Technology Financial and Executive Strategies at IDC. “As a result, IDC believes that offerings like Brocade Network Subscription will rapidly become an integral method for acquiring IT resources as organizations seek to introduce heightened levels of flexibility and variability into their network infrastructure and related capacity management strategies.”
Leading Cloud Computing and Managed Service Providers Turn to Brocade Network Subscription to Increase Business Agility
Rackspace Hosting, a service leader in cloud computing that delivers enterprise business solutions and services to more than 140,000 customers worldwide, is using Brocade Network Subscription to quickly bring new services to market and to calibrate its network infrastructure costs with revenues. Coupling the new acquisition model with the advanced IPv6 capabilities of Brocade application delivery products, Rackspace recognizes the inherent value of working with Brocade to build out its portfolio of value-added services.
“One of the most important factors in our business is to be able to react immediately to our customers’ unique networking requirements and deliver business agility to help them maximize their IT resources,” said Paul Rad, vice president of Technology & Private Cloud at Rackspace. “Brocade Network Subscription perfectly aligns to our business model as it provides networking capabilities on a metered basis, as we need them, very much in the same way our customers utilize our own services. The pay-as-you go model reduces our capital outlay so we can invest in other growth areas of our business.”
CSC, a global leader in providing technology-enabled business solutions and services, determined that the innovative new approach of Brocade Network Subscription is in perfect alignment with their own business model.
“CSC will add Brocade Network Subscription as a new cloud and managed hosting service solution. This allows us a unique way to differentiate our application service offerings with incredibly flexible terms to support the rapidly changing capacity requirements of cloud environments,” said Nick Wilkinson, president of Market & Product Strategy, Managed Services Sector at CSC. “Working with Brocade helps us to be more responsive to our customers’ IT requirements. Customer business infrastructure requirements demand immediate change through such events as merger and acquisition activity, season-based capacity requirements, and business activities such as cloud-based test and development of new software applications. CSC now has unprecedented flexibility to cost-effectively right-size the networking solutions we provide to our customers with OpEx billing that is consistent with our other cloud commercial terms.”
Cloud-Optimized Network Acquisition
The pay-as-you-grow aspect of Brocade Network Subscription is particularly well-suited for the migration to cloud IT architectures, as it is the most agile option among acquisition models, such as capital purchases and leasing. While organizations of all sizes look to the cloud for different reasons — from improving business processes and application availability to introducing new, value-added services — they all view the ability to quickly address changing internal and external customer needs as a fundamental business requirement.
At the center of this transition is the network, which now must be cloud-optimized at all points to fully support cloud-based applications andservices. In fact, IDC predicts that the migration to public and private clouds will shape network requirements and become a $1.4 billion market in 2011.(1) With so much at stake, organizations must find new ways to maximize existing IT investments and reduce costs, especially in light of budget constraints.
Building upon its heritage of developing high-performing data center fabrics, Brocade is continuing to drive innovative cloud-optimized networking technologies to help its customers transition smoothly to a virtualized, services-on-demand state. With the introduction of Brocade Network Subscription, Brocade is advancing cloud adoption by providing customers with a flexible acquisition option that helps them adapt to the demands of the cloud.
“As a leader in networking solutions that support virtualization and cloud optimization, we are pushing the innovation envelope on both the technical and business front,” said John McHugh, CMO of Brocade. “Brocade Network Subscription is the ‘virtualization’ model for infrastructure procurement. With Brocade Network Subscription, customers can turn on vast amounts of networking capacity, from high-end routers to wiring closet switches, without any upfront capital costs. The monthly subscription is a small portion of what the purchase costs have been historically. Just like application virtualization, this innovative approach allows organizations to acquire network capacity with little risk, while helping them scale up and scale down in line with their month-to-month needs.”
Availability and Additional Details
Brocade Network Subscription is now available for Brocade IP/Ethernet networking solutions, including the Brocade VDX™ family of products, directly from Brocade and through qualified Brocade Alliance Partner Network Elite resellers and Federal partners, as well as global systems integrators.
Brocade Network Subscription includes Essential Support from Brocade Global Services. Brocade Global Services delivers world-class professional services, technical support and education services, enabling organizations to maximize their Brocade investments, accelerate new technology deployments and optimize the performance of networking infrastructures.
For more information on Brocade Network Subscription, visit www.NoNetworkCapEx.com.
Video
Wesley Jess, VP of Supply Chain Operations and Rob Jackson, Product Development Manager at Rackspace, on the benefits of Brocade Network Subscription: http://bit.ly/p9LzsF
IDC’s Joe Pucciarelli on flexible IT acquisition models in the cloud era: http://bit.ly/roGRTn
Brocade CMO John McHugh on VMworld 2011 announcements: http://bit.ly/qcNGII
Brocade Network Subscription two-minute explainer video: http://bit.ly/r8WJwo
Additional Resources
Brocade Network Subscription infographic: http://bit.ly/p3GZ8N
About Brocade
Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world’s leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)
