Brocade targets new technology at Asia-Pacific

Deb Dutta, Brocade's vice-president for Asia-Pacific and Japan, said companies in this region "have a problem of slow links" when retrieving content over long distances, as a result of having less bandwidth. This therefore makes Asia-Pacific an ideal market for Brocade's Wide Area File Services (WAFS), a technology suited for low-bandwidth environments, he added.

The WAFS technology "saves a lot of bandwidth" by caching information at local branches, which automatically updates new or changed information when a user retrieves a particular file, explained Dean Stockwell, Brocade's regional technical services manager for Asia-Pacific and Japan. Users, he added, are "able to get on with what they are doing" and access information quickly.

Dutta told ZDNet Asia that the Asia-Pacific region has the infrastructure to support WAFS, and cited India and China as potential Asian markets for the new storage networking technology. WAFS is targeted at companies with branch offices in different geographical locations.

Said to be the only Windows-compatible product in the market, WAFS is part of the Tapestry family of products announced earlier this month.

Brocade also announced two new 4-gigabit fibre channel switches--the high-end Silkworm 48000 for enterprises and the entry-level Silkworm 200E for small and medium-sized businesses. Both products will be released later this year.

Dutta said the SMB segment is one that Brocade will "address very, very aggressively in the coming year". The Silkworm 200E addresses the storage needs of SMBs, such as low cost and ease of implementation, he added.