EMC’s announcement that it will ship volume management and heterogeneous replication software for the Brocade Fabric Application Platform – originally developed by Rhapsody Networks – will significantly boost the prospects of that device, and follows on from similar announcements already made by Veritas Software Corp, Hewlett Packard Co, and half a dozen or so smaller companies.

Not only will the software will be the first ever that EMC has developed to run on third-party hardware, but it will also allow replication between heterogeneous storage arrays, as revealed by ComputerWire last month (Computergram International 28 February 2003).

EMC did not detail the functions of the software, but said that it should be considered as both a volume management and replication product.

It’s not necessarily new software. There’s a lot of software that we intend to leverage, said Mark Lewis, EMC’s CTO and executive vice president of new ventures.

No shipment date was given, but the software is unlikely to be delivered soon. The FAP hardware is still only in test with OEMs, and has not begun beta testing at end-users. Brocade described HP’s goal to ship its FAB-based virtualization software in the fourth quarter as fairly aggressive.

The relationship is by no means exclusive. Brocade has announced relationships with other suppliers who are our competitors, and we’ll take the same approach, Lewis said, although he declined to comment on which other suppliers’ hardware EMC will port its software to. Candidates include Cisco Systems Inc, which has said it will ship smart modules for its MDS 9000 storage switches and directors this year, and McData Corp and Inrange, which have indicated that they will ship similar technology next year.

The announcement was made yesterday at Brocade’s user conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. At the conference Brocade also announced upgrades to its flagship Silkworm 12000 switch that address the shortcomings that have made many observers judge the device as not director-class hardware (see separate story).

Source: Computerwire