No doubt about it. We are living in an incredibly transformative time in the technology industry. New innovative technologies are emerging, new companies are being founded here in Silicon Valley and in other innovation centers around the world, new alliances are being formed and consolidation is happening everywhere. All of these things are important, interesting, and the topic of many a conversation. We all love technology and a good competitive fight. There is however, another transformation underway that ultimately is likely to have an even more dramatic impact on the future direction of this country -- the creation of arguably the most Internet technology savvy administration that this country has ever seen. There have of course been innovative technology bright spots in the past (Al Gore really was a big advocate of communications and Internet-related technology even if he did ultimately get misquoted as saying he invented the Internet ... but that's a topic for another day). The point is that the current administration has expressed a refreshing willingness to promote and use technology to drive efficiency in government. The creation of a national technology leadership role and the appointment of Aneesh Chopra as the nation's first Federal CTO is a great step forward.

Mr. Chopra has expressed a desire to use technology to transform our economy and our society, such as fostering private sector innovation, overhauling health IT, and using technology to transform the educational system. At the risk of stating the obvious (and maybe coming off as a little self serving), I'd like to point out that the fundamental underpinning that makes all of this possible is universal, unfettered, high speed access from the people that consume and use the information to the places where the information ultimately lives -- in the data and compute centers of business and our federal government. Unfortunately, few would argue that we are woefully behind as a nation in providing this type of public access consistently across this country. Ultimately to provide this universal service, Mr. Chopra should concentrate on achieving three major policy goals:

1. Dramatically expand the penetration of high-speed broadband access throughout this country. To schools, to small businesses, to under served rural communities, to inner cities and municipalities. Everywhere. All the time. At a reasonable cost. And from multiple providers.

2. Fix the cellular wireless infrastructure. We are the laughing stock of the world. Infighting over communications technologies, spectrum, access to markets -- all complex issues no doubt -- have led to a fractured, inefficient, and largely non-interoperable system of communications in this country.  Phones don't work on different cellular networks in the same city. High speed mobile access barely works on anything except the iPhone (apologies in advance to Mr. Obama and his Blackberry). Municipal services like fire and police can't communicate with one another during times of emergency. Set out a fair, sane policy for access to spectrum, demand interoperability between competing technologies (or pick one), and provide businesses streamlined access to build next generation communications services.

3. Mandate net neutrality. Long term, guaranteed, fair access to services utilizing our national information infrastructure -- the Internet -- should be guaranteed without reservation and without questions. Once this is in place, businesses will feel empowered to offer the kind of transformative services that you talk about.

By adopting a clear, simple, universal, nationally accepted policy on communications access, businesses will flourish and we'll ultimately pave the way for an information technology driven transformation of government and information access in general.  And we'll all benefit in the end.

On Tuesday, April 28 we announced an expanded OEM agreement with IBM that will allow IBM to rebrand and sell the Brocade enterprise IP networking family of products through the IBM global sales force and authorized IBM Business Partners. Here are my thoughts on this important agreement in a short video I shot recently.

These are truly exciting times! I had the pleasure over the past three weeks to begin kicking off Brocade’s new channel strategy at our first combined channel partner summits. In Europe we hosted close to 100 partners in beautiful Nice, France and in North America close to 200 partners in ‘beautiful’ Vegas. My team gave me a real run for the money setting up numerous 1-on-1 partner meetings which provided an outstanding opportunity to get direct feedback from partners and learn what their pain points are to ensure that we tune our channel program and strategy to perfection.

General feedback from channel partners is that they are sick and tired of being driven down the low single-digit margin path and at the same time being asked to massively invest in a vendor partnership. The great news here is that what we at Brocade are designing and launching in June is a program that is going to be all about “Quality of Partnership,” focusing on bringing profitability to the partner, and actually investing from our side in partner certification rather than grabbing into partners’ pockets. The feedback we received from partners was outstanding.

It’s all about honesty and trust in partnership.
What became more than clear in a number of the discussions during the summits was that above all partners want to have trust in a partnership. Business partnerships in the channel are planned to be long term, mutually profitable relationships. A good channel partner looks at a vendor’s product portfolio and vision as much as they look at the vendor’s partnership model.

We really scored points and checked all the boxes on what partners wanted to hear:

1. We came in with a truly open approach, actually asking partners to provide us with input regarding what they need and want to see rather than us just telling them what they will get – check
2. We had a very candid conversation regarding what is and what is not in place today - i.e., what they will get today and what's on the horizon – check
3. We confirmed that all of the existing partnerships Foundry brought in will be treated well and honored – no matter what size of business they run - rather than just cleaning up and dishonoring the years of partnership they bring to the table - check

It’s all about quality of program.
When the team and I sat for days in our meeting rooms in San Jose brainstorming on program components and what we want to provide our partners, we focused intensely on bringing real quality to the program. We crunched out a real easy to understand, tiered program whereby partners derive benefits that align exactly with what they bring to the table. “Quid pro Quo: channel partners will get their investments back.” We got enthusiastic thumbs up that we are on the right path.

It’s all about delivery.
The next big thing is going to be delivering on the promises. Partners see a lot of slideware outlining the good things vendors want to do for them; ultimately, ‘the proof of the pudding lies in the eating’ as the English would say. Brocade will ensure to smother channel partners with our benefits and drive up the coverage so that they will truly enjoy a mutually rewarding relationship with Brocade.

Brocade is putting a lot of investment and focus behind our channel program execution as execution is ultimately what we will be measured on by our partners and what will determine how fast we can ramp and expand the program.

Bottom line: It’s all about channels. I hear you, partners.

The Red Devils

As a life long Manchester United fan, it will take a while to recover from the trauma of watching my beloved United (The Red Devils) being trounced by a resurgent Liverpool team 4-1 in Manchester towards the end very productive ten city road trip.  Trust me - if, like me you are a Man U fan, this is truly earth shattering!

Brocade Red that Solves Problems and Saves Green

On the other hand I am pretty sure that Cisco’s UCS announcement, accompanied by the ritual razzamatazz and chest thumping we have come accustomed to from the boys on Tasman Drive, will soon be forgotten, at least by customers who have better and more pressing things to do than worry about five year visions and promises of solving real world problems with a bundle of “soon to be announced” products.

Cool Technology – Not Today Thank You

I agree with one of the analysts who upon attending the Cisco PR/AR jamborees commented (I paraphrase) “this could be one of the biggest mistakes Cisco has ever made”.  Then there was the guy who described the "captivating" (literally) TelePresence-driven press event as like “living in North Korea” (nice one!)  Now admittedly I am a bit biased on this subject.  If Cisco actually manage to bamboozle enough customers and convince them to stall purchases of perfectly good, proven cost saving solutions from Brocade and its partners, my life would be made even more difficult than it is right now.  The problem is that most of the people writing about UCS have never lived the life of an IT manager whose life revolves around meeting unreasonable goals in impossible timelines, with inadequate budgets – all without risking disruption to working systems that run their business.

One journalist I met in Milan was literally drooling as he described to me the Cisco press event he had just come from where they had talked to him about UCS.  “It looks very cool,” he said.  “Just what the world needs right now – cool technology” I thought to myself.  When I asked him what technologies and products were actually discussed the only thing he could remember was Nexus and FCoE and something about integration with VMWare. “They are going to consolidate everything in to one box – SAN and LAN - and drive the market to FCoE,” he said.   When I pointed out the risks associated with running your mission critical applications on an unproven, as yet non-standard technology which required expensive re-cabling, new switches and adapters he started to look a little less smug.   When I suggested he ask Cisco if they themselves are running any of their own mission critical apps on FCoE networks (as they are suggesting their customers should – and of course we know they are not) or even have a project plan to do so, he got all excited because journalists love to ask those kinds of embarrassing questions.

Of course the risk for Brocade is we get labeled a naysayer or party-pooper.  But I found it very interesting that not a single customer asked us about our response to UCS and very few had even heard about it. There are supposedly 10 UCS beta customers out there.  Not sure what they are testing as Cisco admitted most of the products associated with UCS won’t be shipping till 2010.   I also found it interesting that there are only 10 beta customers. Only 10 customers in the world seem interested enough to get early access to technology that supposedly solves just about every major IT problem the world has ever faced in one rack of semi-proprietary gear and some virtualization software.  Hmmm…

Battle lines are drawn

Not surprisingly our OEM partners, IBM and HP are not amused with Cisco and UCS.  Officially so far these respected industry giants have declined to say anything particularly nasty about UCS.  Unofficially I believe they are seething.   Cisco, for so long a strategic partner and ally, has basically taken aim at the core business of both companies and has openly stated they are going in to head long competition for the server, storage (with EMC) and network – in other words the whole IT market.   Brocade’s position as an end to end network solutions provider that enables solutions built and delivered by the broadest ecosystem of partners in the industry has never been more relevant or more attractive to these and many other companies.   We are on the side of open standards, open architecture, choice and supporting the decisions our customers make about which technology they chose, not dictating to them.

The tectonic plates in the IT industry definitely shifted with Cisco's announcement.   Battle lines have been drawn.  But normal business has already been resumed and fantasy has returned to reality as we and our partners go about trying to solve serious IT problems with serious technology.  The market is listening to what we have to say and the contrast between us and our largest competitor could not be clearer.

We are a nation and an industry curled up in the fetal position.

There, I said it. I can think of no better way to describe the state of malaise that seems to be pervading this nation, maybe even the world, in reaction to the current economy. I call this condition the "Complacency Cycle," which is caused both by the fear to take any action and the hope that others will either fail or barely maintain status quo while you wait it out.

The Complacency Cycle has gotten so bad that even businesses in a supposedly free-market economy have basically outsourced all of our thinking and risk-taking to the government. I have to say, that scares me to death. What happened to the America I know, the nation of risk takers and entrepreneurs that has led the world for decades with innovative ideas and bold action?

Worse yet, the complacent like to punish those of us who are actually willing to take risks and action. Take the case of our company. As part of our long-term business strategy, or what we call a "playbook", we have made a number of moves in the last couple of years that admittedly included calculated risks. One, we recognized that we needed to expand our businesses into new market segments, so we made a number of acquisitions including Foundry Networks. Two, we understood that it was in our best interests to reinvest in our local economy, so we are building a state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly campus here in San Jose. Three, we know that fortune favors the bold, so we dared to take on the major incumbent in networking toe-to-toe, on their own turf, after successfully holding them off and beating them when they encroached into our space a few years back.

But naysayers are wary of companies doing anything with positive momentum during this economy. They would rather champion companies who eliminate jobs, apply for government bailouts and stop research and development until things get better. I have a different opinion: We cannot save our way out of this mess through pure cost-cutting and other belt-tightening measures. The only real solution is for companies to stay the course in their long-term strategies (when they have them, as surprisingly few actually do) and innovate themselves back into prosperity. Thankfully, my view is shared by a few counterparts and partners in our industry who have confidently predicted that their companies will continue to grow and thrive through this downturn and come out of it a stronger company. I feel the same way, and I believe the same for Brocade.

So what to do? In my opinion, this nation, the businesses and even individuals must take to heart a few operating principles, as we would say in the tech industry:

• Understand that you yourself are responsible for your future and do not leave it to others (including the government) to make critical decisions for you;
• Don’t be afraid to fail and don't be afraid to take risks;
• Take ownership, accountability and pride in your work;
• Hold yourself and others accountable to deadlines and commitments;
• Offer creative solutions to problems and don’t go along with the crowd if you believe it is the wrong answer…speak up!.
• And last, as I always tell my employees, “Don’t read the newspapers!” All respect to that industry, it’s a guaranteed downer on any given day.
• In fact, there may be only two truths in the world today. One, that change is the only constant, and, two, that the “news,” as presented by today’s media will almost always be bad.

Bottom line: TAKE ACTION. If you don't do anything, you shouldn't expect anything. And if that happens, this Complacency Cycle will keep going and we'll be stuck in this downturn for much longer than we need to be.