Network Appliance has announced it will OEM the Brocade DCX Backbone as part of its datacentre storage offerings.
The two companies first established a storage and data management OEM alliance in October 2002.
Brocade datacentre infrastructure vice president Ian Whiting says the DCX complements NetApp's products because it supports server virtualisation, and high asset utilisation and low power and cooling requirements.
NetApp vice president of solutions marketing Patrick Rogers says the DCX helps its customers to consolidate data management and storage environments into logical infrastructure.
"Enterprise customers place much emphasis on rationalising and virtualising their datacentre infrastructure," Rogers says.
"The DCX is more scalable than SAN directors and accommodates more virtualised applications, and has the industry's highest density footprint, as it requires half the power of competitive offerings and delivers five times the bandwidth", he says.