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By Mel Duvall
In a move that clearly takes a swipe at Cisco, Dell announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with Brocade Communications Systems to begin selling Brocade's networking equipment under the Dell brand.
The partnership, which will allow the companies to market an end-to-end data center offering to clients, follows networking giant Cisco's announcement earlier this year that it would enter the computer server business with its Unified Computing System -- a combination of networking equipment, blade servers and storage. That move let Cisco begin marketing itself as a one-stop shop for data center solutions.
Cisco has maintained that it will continue to work with the larger server manufacturers like Dell, IBM and HP, but those manufacturers have taken steps recently to position themselves to compete against Cisco on its own turf. IBM, for example, has forged agreements to resell networking equipment from Juniper and Brocade, while HP is broadening its ProCurve networking gear line.
In a separate agreement, Dell has forged an alliance with Scalent Systems of Palo Alto, Calif., which sells software to manage network switches and server computers.
Brocade, which is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and has 3,800 employees, saw $1.5 billion in sales last year. Cisco, by comparison, had $36 billion in sales in 2008 and employs about 66,000. It is also headquartered in San Jose.
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