News

posted on 23 April 2008 10:31

It's reported that Brocade has stopped shipping the Packeteer Wide Area File System (WAFS) acceleration product it OEM'd from Packeteer.

Brocade first started shipping a WAFS product which it sourced from Tacit in 2005. The supply arrangement continued when Packeteer bought Tacit in 2006. It was enhanced when Brocade include the WAFS product with its StorageX file virtualisation product in a new offering, Branch File Manager, which provide file transmission acceleration services to branch offices.

This product was dropped around November 2007 after lack-lustre sales. So too was the WAFS product. Brocade now says that it no longer considers having WAFS technology as a core part of its File Area Network (FAN) offerings and instead partners with WAFS suppliers. There have been, however, no such partnerships announced.

It also transpires that Brocade's FAN products generated less than 5 percent of Brocade's revenues last quarter. A recent survey from TheInfoPro listed Brocade as number twelve on the list of popular file virtualisation vendors.

The FAN concept first appeared in mid-2006. It is now almost two years on and the idea has not generally taken off. The company is still firmly behind it though with new product offerings promised.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}