In this video, I walk viewers through the critical design elements that make our new data center in the new campus a world-class facility in the way of space usage, energy efficiency and sustainability practices that execute on our company’s business and corporate responsibility goals. Our new data center is more than just a functional facility; it is our showcase and emblematic of our data center heritage and expertise.

Here are some facts and figures about the data center design, as well as our new campus in general, that make them world-class:

• The data center used a flat-floor design (versus a standard raised floor approach) to support taller rack configurations providing 12% more space within the same footprint.
  
• The in-row cooling and hot-row containment design provides for great flexibility for equipment density changes. We also have leading cabling designs that will make change management much easier;
  
• All in all, these data center and campus designs will help Brocade qualify for one of the largest utility incentive rebates in California’s history. Specifically:
  
• The campus and data center will exceed the California Energy Code requirements by 16%; 
  • We have installed a 550 kW photovoltaic system installed on the parking garage roof that makes good dual-use of an open space;
    
  • In the area of water conservation and recycling, we are on track to consume 40% less water than a traditional campus due to landscape and plumbing design
    
  • We are on track to receive a Gold rating associated with the standards established by LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, which means we’ll be proudly join this distinguished list of certified/rated LEED projects here in the Silicon Valley.
    

On May 3, the first group of employees moved into the new Brocade San Jose campus and we expect full occupancy by July 23. From a technical and operational standpoint, this is a remarkable achievement made possible by hundreds of thousands of hours of hard work and dedication by our employees and project partners. Through collaboration and creative work-arounds during a very rainy winter, we were able to overcome numerous obstacles and stay on schedule.

But what I am most proud of is how the campus embodies Brocade’s innovation and thought leadership that will contribute to a great workplace and an industry-leading showcase of networking technologies and best practices:

• State-of-the-art Data Center: Our innovative new data center boasts advanced energy-efficient systems and best-of-breed technologies.

• Sustainability:  We are focused on improving the sustainability in our products, facilities and operations—three key areas where we can have a positive impact on managing greenhouse gases. The campus utilizes energy monitoring/reduction systems, water-saving systems, solar panels, high use of recycled materials, environmentally friendly materials, and other strategies that we expect to earn us a coveted Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold rating for the buildings.

• Volunteering: Giving back to the community is part of the Brocade culture. We developed the Brocade Day of Service program to coordinate volunteer service for every employee on their move day. The first two move groups have already completed projects at the Second Harvest Food Bank, Friends of Guadalupe River Park & Gardens, and Resource Area for Teachers (RAFT).

• Amenities: A full-service café, coffee bar, expanded game room and fitness center are just a few of the amenities we’ve designed into the campus. Construction on the adjacent retail center and Target are underway.

This year Brocade was named one of the Fortune's “100 Best Companies To Work For,” and just last week we were ranked the No. 1 Best Place to Work in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times. We believe that this new campus will make Brocade an even more rewarding place of employment.

But our work isn’t done yet. The full potential of the campus won’t be realized until all of our employees move in and make it their home. Buildings and fixtures are just the skeleton of a company. Our employees are who define the spirit and culture of Brocade, developing their own ideas and innovations, finding new ways to leverage the campus. Bringing together all 2000+ of our Bay Area employees in a single campus will help us continue our pace of innovation.

The phenomenal growth of the healthcare industry over the last few years in Asia has received plenty of attention in local and global markets. To meet the surging demand for high-quality healthcare, coupled with an increasing need to conform to global standards in delivery and management, healthcare service providers across most developed and developing economies of the region are quickly upgrading their IT infrastructures.

I recently saw a couple of healthcare studies from Springboard Research, where it estimated that the total Healthcare IT market in Asia (excluding Japan) is expected to hit US$4.8 billion this year. If the healthcare industry has been saving for the rainy day, then guess what … it’s raining hard!

Back in the mid 1990’s, before someone coined the term “medical tourism,” that concept was known as the international patient business. Travelling internationally to seek healthcare in Asia is very much a norm among the wealthy in the developing nations! What has changed is that demand has now cascaded to include the very large middle class in those countries! Today, we are beginning to see innovative offerings such as medical treatment and procedures on board cruise ships, using on-board facilities that enable patients to recuperate while cruising and relaxing at sea!

Demand drives competition and competition drives differentiation and therefore innovation. Developed nations in Asia and the healthcare providers within them have greatly increased their spending on technologies for medical and diagnostic equipment, care management and patient records, and are now investing in value-added applications to support this IT infrastructure, regulatory requirements and client privacy. Such was the case for Asian Hospital and Medical Center in the Philippines that recently adopted an AMALGA Hospital Information System from Microsoft to support the conversion from paper-driven manual processes to a fully automated environment—to ensure accuracy of data capture, lessen manual transcription in the transfer of patient data and minimize errors in medical results.

Even after patients return home from treatment in many facilities, physicians can continue to communicate with them electronically. For instance, hospitals in Singapore can upload medical-grade images and procedure records as required for continued care and treatment in their home country. By seamlessly linking electronic health record systems (EHRs) to share information across a broad network of providers, this approach provides international collaboration known as “patients beyond borders.” This type of collaboration depends on reliable, high-performance IP networking solutions that Brocade is very well positioned to deliver today!

Brocade – Enabling Healthcare Connectivity and Data Center Efficiency
Any hospital network infrastructure is only as robust as its weakest link. A reliable, distributed, scalable and secured wired and wireless network infrastructure is required for connecting a hospital campus to a wide variety of devices, including laptops, workstations, nurses call stations, equipment tracking for patient diagnostics and administrative/record-keeping functions.

Brocade, in partnership with Motorola, ShoreTel, IBM Security and McAfee, is ready to help healthcare providers meet these requirements while aggressively reducing their Operating expenses. Brocade has a proven history of providing high-quality network infrastructure in thousands of mission-critical data centers around the world. As a result, it can leverage that experience to help healthcare providers scale up to the stringent performance and security expectations of modern medical facilities!

With more than 12 years in existence, Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) isn’t a new technology, but it also isn’t a “table stakes” feature found in every network. MPLS was originally created for large service providers to speed up the flow of network traffic and ultimately simplify manageability. As with many new technologies, MPLS certainly wasn’t cheap when it was first introduced (in truth, MPLS prices were artificially inflated). And it was initially perceived as being complicated to set up and refine…ironic considering that it was designed to improve and simplify the network infrastructure. As with most technologies, MPLS eventually evolved into a solution that has become relatively inexpensive and straightforward to install. Even with all these improvements, however, there is still a lingering perception that MPLS is costly and that only large service providers have the need, know-how, and deep pockets to install it and achieve its full range of benefits.

The fact of the matter is that MPLS is flexible, fast, and cost-effective. It enables network segmentation and quality of service for latency-sensitive applications such as business-class voice and high-quality video. Today, Brocade has many enterprise customers that are taking advantage of these “service provider” capabilities and beginning their own corporate implementations, especially in distributed enterprises. Industry analysts predict double-digit growth for Carrier Ethernet in the coming years, and Brocade is dedicated to helping carriers transition to the advantages of the higher bandwidth and lower cost that Ethernet provides. Brocade Ethernet solutions have a proven track record in service provider networks—with more than 5000 Brocade routers deployed worldwide in carrier networks and Brocade solutions managing traffic in more than 70 MPLS deployments.

Bringing all this to reality, the Brocade NetIron CER 2000 Router, our newest router offering, provides high performance and scalable MPLS in an ultra-compact 1U form factor…a virtually unheard of combination until now. Demand for this new product has been startlingly high, especially for providers that are driving MPLS closer to the edge of their networks, delivering video over IP multicast and Virtual Private LAN Services (VPLS).

From an industry perspective, the NetIron CER 2000 is the only router of its size that offers 10 Gigabit Ethernet and is priced at just a fraction of the cost of traditional cumbersome MPLS routers. In fact, it has twice the routing capacity, offers 33 percent space savings and 66 percent power savings, and provides almost three times better forwarding performance at half the price of comparable solutions—making it ideal for cost-effective cloud computing, for instance. These numbers equal not only CapEx and OpEx cost savings but also translate into the flexibility to innovate and deliver the types of services customers have been reading about for years but could never order. The result? An increasingly bright future for MPLS in both service provider and distributed enterprise environments.

All,

Here are some of my thoughts on our outstanding financial results from Q4 and full FY 09. I also address some other hot topics such as rumors of acquisition, some competitive moves as well as what Brocade is thankful for this year.

Enjoy,

Mike

I am in Japan this week for a series of meetings with business partners, customers and local IT press.  I am here with our CEO, Mike Klayko, for the official signing and announcement of a new strategic partnership with Net One Systems.

What makes this announcement particularly exciting for us is the fact that Net One is one of the largest independent channel partners for Cisco. In fact, they were named Cisco’s “Partner of the Year” in Japan this year.  This announcement has created quite a stir in the Japanese market as it demonstrates once more the fatigue that has set in with Cisco’s customers and partners as they seek to dominate every aspect of the systems and networking market with their “take it or leave it” one-stop-shop, proprietary approach to complex issues like server and data center virtualization.

We are also using this trip to make a strong statement about our commitment to the Japanese market.  At the start of the year we decided to break Japan out from our Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ) sales region.  It is now a separate sales region and we are making some significant investments in people and infrastructure to grow our business there.

Few people realize that Japan is the second largest IT market in the world. Despite being in the doldrums economically for about 10 years, Japan still consumes over $2 Billion in networking gear a year.  Unlike most other countries, Cisco is not the “top dog” in Japan.

The major Japanese computer companies – Hitachi, NEC and Fujitsu – dominate the landscape and market share through a somewhat complex mesh of joint ventures, reseller agreements and OEM partnerships.  What’s interesting for us is that Brocade already has long-standing and deep OEM partnerships with all three Japanese OEM’s on the storage networking side of our business.  This gives us a unique opportunity and platform to build and expand our partnership on the data networking side of our business. Our trip to Japan this week also coincided with a general election that saw Yukio Hatoyama and the DPJ come to power.

Dell and Brocade - Mike and Mike

This week we expect to announce a significant expansion of our current OEM agreement with Dell. With Cisco’s ever deepening partnership with EMC and VMware and Dell now views Brocade as a critical technology and business partner to help them build their own data center virtualization solutions and compete more effectively with Cisco in the market. These two major announcements are expected to dramatically expand our routes to market for SAN, LAN and converged networking products.

KONICHIwhat?

Business executives who travel abroad on a regular basis have learned (usually by making embarrassing mistakes) how to conduct themselves in a variety of business situations in other countries. Those who do not take the time to learn just a little about the country they are visiting, the culture, history, business customs and general etiquette will often be dismissed as an ignorant or (even worse) arrogant foreigner.  I have certainly made my fair share of faux pas.  The casual tossing of a business card across the table in Japan is one example.  Over-hyping your company or products in Germany is another no-no.  Thinking a business lunch in Spain would last about an hour instead of the more typical 4-hour gastronomic marathon is another common, but enjoyable mistake. Anyone seeking to minimize the number of embarrassing moments abroad would do well to read the international business traveler’s bible and best seller Kiss, Bow or Shake Hands. It provides a wealth of really useful information on how to conduct business (and yourself) in over a hundred countries with chapters on the demographics, political systems, economy, business protocol and a lot more.  There are some hilarious tidbits for the first time reader.

As an Englishman, I naturally went straight to the chapter on doing business in the UK.  It was pretty obvious the author had either not spent enough time in the UK or had been ill advised.  Despite what it says in chapter 20, I can assure you that most English people do not stop work to have tea and biscuits at 4:00pm every day of the week.  Most Brits working in the City of London Financial District are more likely to be found in the local pub, well into their second or third pint of Tetley’s bitter (a favorite brand of the dark, non-fizzy variety of beer favored by the Brits) at that hour of the day; especially on Fridays.

The Ashes

While on the subject of my homeland, I cannot resist the temptation of rubbing the noses of every Australian out there in the shame and dishonor their cricket team brought on their nation following the crushing defeat by England in the most hotly contested cricket match in the world - The Ashes.  Now I know that explaining the rules of cricket to anyone from a non-cricket-playing nation is like trying to teach calculus to a 5 year old, (I speak from years of trying), but trust me when I say that cricket is truly a great game once you understand the rules.  Yes, it is true that a game can last up to 5 days and still end up in a draw (or “tie” in American English). And yes, the players do leave the field for lunch and “tea” at certain set times of the day.  I can hear derisory laughter already from American friends.

The Ashes is a monumental sporting event in the cricketing calendar as it brings together the greatest rivals in the game of international cricket - England and Australia.  Every two years, The Poms (the English) and the Ozzies (the Australians), play a best-of -five matches over about 6 weeks.  The reason it is called The Ashes dates back to an event that took place in 1882 in Australia. The last time The Ashes were played was in Australia two years ago.  As expected,  the Ozzies won the series 5-0; a complete whitewash.  To make matters worse I had the misfortune of being on vacation on Australia’s Sunshine Coast with my wife (an Australian) and children at the time. To say I got an earful is the understatement of the century.   I was on the wrong end of a tsunami of what the Ozzies call “Pom-bashing.”  If you want to know why the Ozzies call the Brits “Poms’ click here.

Given that my in-laws are all from Australia (the world’s largest former penal colony) and that Australian sports men and women typically trounce the Brits at just about everything, this years Ashes’ victory was very sweet indeed and I plan to remind my Ozzie in-laws about it every chance I get – that is until the next time they kick our butts.

The Incredible Shrinking Ian

I am now two weeks in to my 12-week weight loss challenge and I am pleased to report I am on track.  So far I have lost seven of 15 pounds I am looking to lose.  Everyone tells me it falls off fast the first few weeks, but keeping it off is the hard part.   I did take it easy on the sushi and sake this week so hopefully more good progress to report in the next blog.

Brocade is known for a couple of things – building Extraordinary Networks, and developing and maintaining close partnerships with other companies in ways that benefit customers  beyond the benefits that they would receive if Brocade “made it all here.” One of the areas in which we partner closely with other vendors to deliver a complete solution is campus wireless access, or WiFi.  Our focus on cross-compatibility not only among our own products but with many other vendors makes our combined offering here stronger and more flexible than single-vendor solutions.   With the increasingly distributed enterprise, the benefits of a combined WiFi offering are absolutely clear.

The driver for the growth in enterprise wireless   to this point is primarily due to convenience; the increased needs of a mobile enterprise. Moving forward, one of the major trends is that  wireless  is becoming an integral part of a networking infrastructure as opposed to something that is really built for convenience and casual use. This is particularly important as the new wireless standard built in 802.11n begin to emerge, as opposed to the past standards – 802.11a, and 802.11b/g. – 802.11n can now carry traffic comparable to your wired local area network speed, which is 100 megabits per second (Mbps) and above while enhancing the robustness and range of the wireless signal. So potentially users can actually leverage wireless access to access mission critical applications and access data which normally would be too bulky or too large to be downloaded through the legacy wireless technology. With 802.11n some organizations and enterprise may actually choose to bypass the wiring of the building and go completely wireless.

As this trend increases, we will continue to see customers source and fund the deployment of wired and wireless networks at the same time, vs. doing what they have traditionally done and  treating them separately. In this context, it would seem better for them to get the entire solution from a single vendor, preferably with unique value-added functionalities – It is. It might also seem that it would be better to have the entire solution developed by that vendor –  It’s not.

Vendors who would offer you their, and only their wares from end to end in the development of a local area network are not necessarily selling you the best products for your needs, but, potentially, products that meet the lowest requirements of the stated need at the highest margins for themselves.  The Brocade approach, on the other hand, is to continuously survey the landscape for the best available technology, regardless of the source, establish its interoperability with all of your various network components, build strong relationships with the vendors who supply it and deploy it at the best possible cost/performance ratio. This strategy is enabled by the fact that we do not need to subsidize other areas of the company by charging you more for portions of an end-to-end solution than the market demands, under the guise and per the assertion that, “If we make it all it must be the best.” In fact, we have an increasing number of customers who did buy into that, and who were greatly disappointed later, and who are now turning to us for a complete replacement of parts of, if not all of their network infrastructure.

While we are happy to help in that regard, we’d rather work with them to get it right the first time – selecting from best-of-breed vendors, working to ensure interoperability and availability in IP networks with the same intensive processes we always have in the data center, and extending our partnership beyond our technology partners and to the end users themselves.