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Based on its recent analysis of the carrier Ethernet access switching and routing market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes Brocade with the 2009 Global Frost & Sullivan Product Leadership of the Year Award. Brocade's flair for innovation is best evidenced by its ability to pack a host of features in a compact form factor, and offer them at extremely competitive prices. Its industry leading price-performance value has enabled it to consistently gain market shares.
The latest additions to Brocade's product lines are the NetIron CER and CES series. Both offer 10 GbE-capable 1RU routers and switches that provide a broad set of advanced Layer 2, IPv4, and Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) capabilities in the same device and they may be deployed for metro Ethernet services and mobile backhaul. The addition of these products is expected to considerably expand the company's market presence.
Brocade's solution features a common end-to-end operating system (OS), multi-service IronWare OS, and a common management system that offers integration with many network management system/open source software (NMS/OSS) vendors including IBM Tivoli Netcool and EMC Smarts. It supports a comprehensive set of operations, administration, and maintenance (OAM) features for all layers.
"Brocade also supports end-to-end MPLS on all its products in the NetIron product line," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Prayerna Raina. "It provides proactive network monitoring across all products and offers offline traffic analysis and network control without impacting forwarding performance utilizing sFlow."
In addition to MPLS sub-50ms failover using Fast Reroute (FRR), Brocade offers a comprehensive set of Layer 2 control protocols comprising its innovative protocols, Metro Ring Protocol (MRP), and Virtual Switch Redundancy Protocol (VSRP), and standards-based Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) and Multiple Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP). These protocols enable superior resiliency and faster convergence.
One of the key aspects of the Brocade solution is its Advanced Layer 2 features set. It offers E-LINE, E-LAN, and E-TREE services using MPLS and Provider Bridging/Provider Backbone Bridging. It also helps extend full virtual private local area network (LAN) services (VPLS) towards the edge and access nodes, and supports VPLS-PBB for scaling VPLS networks. It offers a comprehensive Layer 3 feature set and MPLS services, providing several service choices: IP over MPLS, virtual leased line (VLL), VPLS, BGP/MPLS VPN, and Multi-VRF.
With attributes such as redundant switch fabric, terabit-scale architecture, wire-speed dual stack IPv4/IPv6 routing, and high scalability, Brocade has ensured that service providers will receive the best performance. Moreover, its comprehensive set of features will enable future-proofing deployments, in a cost-effective and compact form and imparts a lot of flexibility with regard to features and chassis options.
Brocade has periodically enhanced its portfolio to address key trends in the market. It offers industry-leading port density and hardware and software scalability, thus reducing the total cost of ownership.
Brocade offers standards compliant products and its NetIron CES 2000 series is MEF 9, 14 and 21 certified, while the NetIron MLX Series is MEF 9 and MEF 14 certified. The NetIron product line also has other certifications such as NEBS and RUS, which signify high product quality.
"It offers a common OS across the entire range of its portfolio," notes Raina. "With a very strong feature set, Brocade offers quality products to meet the continuously evolving communication service provider requirements."
Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in new product development and launch within its industry. The recipient company has shown innovation by introducing a broad line of products and technologies.
Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research in order to identify best practices in the industry.
About Brocade
Brocade (brocade.com) develops extraordinary networking solutions that enable today's complex, data-intensive businesses to optimize information connectivity and maximize the business value of their data.
About Frost & Sullivan
Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, enables clients to accelerate growth and achieve best-in-class positions in growth, innovation and leadership. The company's Growth Partnership Service provides the CEO and the CEO's Growth Team with disciplined research and best-practice models to drive the generation, evaluation, and implementation of powerful growth strategies. Frost & Sullivan leverages over 45 years of experience in partnering with Global 1000 companies, emerging businesses and the investment community from 40 offices on six continents.
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jake.wengroff[.]frost.com 
