Brocade offers pay as you go networking

Beverley Head
Wednesday, 31 August 2011 18:08

Networking specialist Brocade is offering its largest customer the opportunity to purchase networking capacity using a ground breaking cloud style model, where they are charged per month, per port on the network.

It's a key weapon as Brocade makes an aggressive push into the sector of the networking market currently dominated by Cisco and HP. It will however require careful handling - as the service will only be offered directly from Brocade, not from its resellers, potentially lining up some opportunity for channel conflict.

Graham Schultz regional manager for Brocade, said that the key selling point was that the Brocade Network Subscription Service would allow enterprises to get the cost of networking off their capital budget and expense it. The offering is only targeted at the larger end of town - where companies are spending more than $500,000 plus on their network infrastructure.

While Mr Schultz did not provide any local costs, Brocade has indicated that a company which would typically spend $1.4 million on networking infrastructure, might expect to pay a cost of around $56 per port connected per month using the subscription services. The subscription option is only available to users of Brocade's IP networks, not its SAN network products.

The company is pitching the approach as offering more flexibility to large enterprises. 'We would deploy (the network) and they pay for what they use when they use it,' said Mr Schultz.

He acknowledged that at present the company had only about 5 per cent share of the Australian IP networking market, and this is an attempt to differentiate itself in the market and compete head on with Cisco. Of course Brocade can't patent the model - and if it gains any marketplace traction it's likely that its rivals will quickly follow suit.

Brocade however commands a much larger stake of the SAN network market - 70 per cent according to Mr Schultz.