The company’s share of total worldwide revenue for high-end SAN directors climbed from 26% in the third quarter last year, to 30% in the fourth quarter, according to Dell’Oro Group estimates quoted by Brocade at its analyst conference in San Francisco yesterday.
According to the Dell’Oro numbers, Brocade also saw an increase in its share of the SAN switch and bladed switch market, which rose from 58% in the third quarter to 61% in the fourth quarter.
That reversed the trend that has seen Cisco Systems Inc slowly chew into Brocade and McData’s shares of the SAN market. Brocade said a major reason for this is its support for the latest 4Gbit version of Fibre Channel, across all of its SAN switches, directors and routers.
Although McData began shipping 4GFC switches last year, it says it will not ship 4GFC directors until the second half of this year. Cisco has yet to ship any 4GFC devices at all, other than the low-end 20-port device it OEMs from QLogic. It is widely expected to launch a 4GFC 256-port director in May, although according to reports this box has already been delayed once.
Last month Brocade forecast revenue for its fiscal year ending January 31 2007 of $660m to $672m, or up to 17% year-on-year growth. Yesterday it raised that guidance to $665m to $680m.
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