Key Finding from Gartner: Fibre Channel Will Remain Protocol of Choice for Next Decade
Brocade today announced continued momentum for its Gen 6 Fibre 
Channel storage networking solutions with availability from its key OEM partners, including Dell EMC, Fujitsu and NetApp. This announcement is in addition to Hitachi Data Systems shipping Brocade® Gen 6 directors, blade and switch since July, reinforcing Fibre Channel as the protocol of choice for mission-critical enterprise storage.
A June 2016 Gartner report, “The Future of Storage Protocols,” states that “storage networking investments are becoming a critical top priority due to the adoption of high-throughput, solid-state and flash storage… Storage performance bottlenecks are moving out of arrays and into the storage network, so Fibre Channel will remain as the data center storage protocol of choice for the next decade.”[1]
Other key findings from the Gartner report include:
· IT leaders can scale their services and double or quadruple the number of transactions and/or application performance by upgrading their storage network together with the latest solid-state storage.
· By upgrading the storage network, IT leaders can reduce costs. Upgrading consolidates the number of network switches, cables, and host-based adaptors or network interface cards.
Fibre Channel is generally accepted as the lowest latency and most reliable network infrastructure for storage. Gen 6 Fibre Channel technology enables organizations to address their performance, reliability, and scalability requirements for the all-flash data center, new data center architectures and next-generation storage technologies.
“We are pleased that the recent Gartner report reiterates the importance of Fibre Channel as the data center protocol of choice for storage networking for the foreseeable future,” said Jack Rondoni, vice president of storage networking at Brocade. “Through our OEM partners, including Dell EMC, Fujitsu, HDS and NetApp, we are already delivering Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions that maximize the performance of flash storage and deliver unprecedented reliability and scalability. We plan to have additional announcements in the coming months as more partners launch our Gen 6 platforms.”
“AOL continues to rely on Fibre Channel for storage connectivity to our most critical systems,” said Dan Pollack, chief architect of storage operations at AOL. “We recently started the refresh of our existing infrastructure to Gen 6 Fibre Channel. AOL is committed to Fibre Channel for the future when our systems demand extremely high performance and availability.”
Brocade has been first to market with its Gen 6 Fibre Channel solutions comprised of the Brocade X6 directors, Brocade SX6 extension blade and Brocade G620 switch. Combined with Brocade Fabric Vision™ technology, Gen 6 Fibre Channel products enable customers to drive always-on business operations, eliminate performance bottlenecks and adapt to the requirements of digital organizations.
