Brocade Joins Forces With Oracle

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., a member of the Oracle PartnerNetwork, unveiled a set of technology solutions developed specifically for use with Oracle database and application suites to enable the efficient and reliable delivery of mission-critical business systems functions. Through extensive collaborative efforts with multiple leading technology partners, Brocade and Oracle have jointly defined and tested vendor-agnostic, multiprotocol technology solution sets designed to address the needs of small to medium businesses (SMBs) and midsize to large enterprises.

Recognizing Brocade as a leading end-to-end networking vendor with a complete portfolio of products to support the rigorous connectivity requirements for Oracle applications and databases, Oracle worked extensively with Brocade to develop multiple solution sets for data warehousing, business applications, and virtualization deployments that are now included in Oracle reference configurations. This announcement bolsters Brocade’s strategy of becoming the network infrastructure provider of choice for major IT systems vendors, such as Oracle, whose business software systems support hundreds of thousands of enterprise customers worldwide.

“Oracle is the largest business software company and Brocade delivers one of the industry’s broadest application delivery, Ethernet, and storage network portfolios,” said Judson Althoff, senior vice president, Global Alliances and Channels at Oracle. “We work together to deliver solutions to our customers so that we can provide proven and tested configurations to allow customers to make decisions with confidence.”

“The requirements of IT today are driving technology vendors to collaborate closely to drive innovation and deliver tightly coupled, best-in-class solutions to end users,” said Zeus Kerravala, senior vice president, Yankee Group. “The collaboration between Brocade and Oracle as announced today exemplifies this trend, with these two technology leaders delivering highly reliable, heterogeneous networking-based business solutions that help their customers maximize their investments in both companies.”

Since 2005, Brocade has been working with Oracle to connect applications within the data center. With the expansion of the Brocade networking product portfolio to include a full range of IP networking equipment, Brocade has been able to increase its relevance in multiple Oracle environments and platforms, resulting in the development of a variety of solutions that span distributed IT infrastructures.

Databases and Data Warehousing
Brocade industry-leading storage area network (SAN) switches have been incorporated into multiple pre-tested Oracle design configurations to create high-performance, fully optimized database and data warehousing solutions:

• Brocade 5300 switches and Brocade host bus adapters (HBAs) combined with EMC Symmetrix V-Max storage systems with enterprise flash drives are designed to optimize Oracle OLTP throughput to meet the stringent performance demands of large enterprise customers.
• Brocade 5100 switches and Brocade HBAs combined with EMC CLARiiON CX4 storage systems with enterprise flash drives are designed to optimize Oracle OLTP throughput for midsized enterprises or departments. Moreover, Brocade 5100 and 5300 switches coupled with EMC CLARiiON CX4 and Symmetrix V-Max Storage systems deliver proven and scalable data warehouses.
• Brocade 300, 5100, and 5300 SAN switches or Brocade DCX backbones paired with Sun Fire servers or Sun SPARC Enterprise servers and Sun Storage systems are optimized for Oracle data warehouse workloads ranging from 6.04 TB to 205.44 TB.

Business Intelligence and Business Applications
The end-to-end portfolio of Brocade networking products helps optimize business intelligence solutions that fully scale to meet growing business requirements and reduce total cost of ownership (TCO). These solutions include:

• The Brocade ServerIron Application Delivery Controller provides load balancing capabilities and combines with the Brocade FastIron LS for IP/Ethernet connectivity to form the Oracle reference architecture for optimized business intelligence application-to-disk using the Sun Storage 7410 Unified Storage System.
• HP StorageWorks 8/24 SAN Switches (Brocade 300 switches) provide the necessary network connectivity component of the HP and Oracle Consulting Accelerate Solution for Industrial Manufacturing. Created and delivered by Oracle Consulting, the solution is built on HP BladeSystem servers and HP storage preloaded with the Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12. The Oracle Accelerate for Midsize Companies solution enables faster time-to-value with reduced IT risk for growing businesses.

Virtualization
The broad range of Brocade networking products supports Oracle VM server virtualization software to deliver more efficient performance in the following ways:

• Oracle Validated Configurations consisting of Oracle VM, Brocade 300 switches, Brocade 815/825 HBAs, and NetApp FAS3100 Series Storage enhance server application optimization while increasing visibility within virtualized environments to reduce downtime.
• As part of the recently announced Oracle VM Storage Connect program, Brocade products that are included greatly enhance the ease with which storage can be managed and provisioned in an Oracle VM environment.

These solutions are available today through Brocade and its technology alliance partners.

“Network connectivity is the driving force behind the efficient and secure delivery of business applications, especially in today’s highly distributed IT environments,” said Marc Randall, senior vice president of Products and Offerings at Brocade. “Being selected by Oracle, one of the world’s largest software vendors, to deliver the critical network infrastructure components of these innovative solutions is validation of the value of our proven, high-performance portfolio of data center offerings.”