IBM and its Three Amigos for Data Center Networking

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Long-time readers of my blog know that typically IBM makes its announcements on Tuesdays, but this week, we had an announcement today, Wednesday!

IBM announced agreements with Brocade, Cisco and Juniper Networks to help build more dynamic infrastructures. An IBM study estimates that the "digital footprint" of each person will grow from 1TB today to 16TB by the year 2020, and all of that data will need bandwidth to get around.IBM’s Data Center Networking (DCN) Initiative is focused on providing clients with solutions to address these three key areas in networking:

• Partner for choice of networking products based and open standards to ensure clients can select from a full range of hardware options for data center networks. IBM will build on its strong partnerships with leading networking vendors to provide greater customer choice.

• Integrate with IBM Data Center Products and Services. IBM continues to deliver a comprehensive portfolio of services for network design, integration and management from IBM Global Technology Services (GTS).
• IBM differentiates itself with Common Data Center Management, where we can bring together software products, such as IBM Systems Director and Tivoli portfolio, to create what we refer to as a "Unified Service Management" software platform.

Here's a sample of what IBM announced:

Brocade

IBM continues its strategic support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) with a Converged B32 switch, and Converged Network Adapters (CNA) for IBM System x servers. A CNA card does the job of both the Ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC) as well as the Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA), reducing the number of cables from each server.

Cisco

IBM and its Business Partners will resell the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switches, a leading family of high-performance, low-latency switches for data center networks supporting lossless 10GbE, Fibre Channel and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE).

Juniper Networks

IBM will OEM selected Juniper EX and MX switches and routers. This expands upon IBM and Juniper's long-term relationship that includes a reseller agreement with IBM Global Technology Services, collaboration on Juniper's Stratus Project, and IBM's ten worldwide Cloud Labs.

For more details, see the IBM [Press Release].

technorati tags: IBM, Brocade, Cisco, Juniper Networks, FCoE, DCN, CNA, NIC, HBA, Nexus 5000, 10GbE, GTS