 to the CEO. We're back at theCUBE live in Las Vegas at EMC World 2011, our one year anniversary for theCUBE, and I'm here with my alter ego co-host, Stu Miniman, who's the senior analyst at Wikibon. Stu, filling in for Dave Vellante. Stu, welcome back into theCUBE. Saw you doing the EMC TV thing earlier. Thanks, John, and what I'm excited right now is that, you know, interrops down the street here, and they're talking about networking, and they're talking about cloud. So, this segment, we're going to go back and talk about cloud and networking here, because we've got Mike Claco from Brocade. Brocade, Mike Claco, the CEO of Brocade, another C-level executive to have a deep conversation. Thanks for coming in and spending some time with us. You guys are in a quiet period, so we kind of got that little disclosure that earnings coming up, but let's talk about tech a little bit. You guys have been in the news lately around your aggressive networking efforts, obviously, as a company. You guys have great facility in California, 100G Ethernet. What's the latest technology moves you're making in networking that you want to share with the folks out there? Well, there's a lot of, from a networking standpoint, there's a lot of technologies. We had a tech day last week, and during that meeting, we announced over 30 new technologies. The extension of what we're doing in the storage side, which has been a full complement of products on 16 gig, and so it's the next turn of the technology in terms of advanced feature set. And by the way, when we did that, not only did we just advance the speed of the technology, but we also put encryption in it, we put compression in it, and so we've used some features that had been standalone products, now are built into every port. But we also continue to push the envelope because the requirements customers are having today are just enormous in terms of all the video. I mean, you see all the video feeds, you see all the things that are going on around the growth of video on the web and so forth. In fact, we did an analysis, we think that video is going to be 10x in the next three years from the requirements today. And so data centers weren't designed that way. So people are out there talking about networking. Networking has been a business that has been the lifeblood of the internet. If it wasn't for networking and the plumbing, a la Cisco, brocades, et cetera, we'd have no internet. And the market's changing. We're hearing about big data, we're hearing about video. Skype was just acquired by Microsoft. It's a big video play. Phones are changing, mobility. Talk to the folks out there about what this fabric, network fabric means. And people are referring to the fabric wars. And you guys are in the center of this convergence and it's not just conversion networking. It's a re-architecture. There's a changing of the guard in networking. And you still got to meet the performances. And John, if I can add to that. Mike, at Brocade Tech Day, Brocade actually said that you guys were first with the fabric discussion, with VCS. And so you kind of trying to claim that term. So can you give us a little bit of color as to where you think that, what that means? Well, actually, thank you for bringing that up. We did announce Ethernet fabrics. We announced it about a year ago. And then we actually started delivering product at the end of last year. So Ethernet fabrics are, if you think about it, we've taken the best that have existed out of the storage networking world and we've applied it to the Ethernet world. And the reason we have to do that is you need a new architectural design because data centers were not architected for the growth of data, nor the growth in the network traffic that folks are experiencing today. So by creating an Ethernet fabric, it does a few things. One, from a management standpoint, best management is no management. So these products actually self discover, self configure, self manage, and so forth. The other thing is a very flat surface, a layer two level, so you can connect lots of devices, make it very, very simple to go ahead and implement in a virtualized environment. In fact, the primary reason we looked at it is we made a bet that virtualization, as well as cloud computing, was going to be the preeminent architecture that everybody was going to go for in the future, in design too. And the fact is you need an Ethernet fabric as the base for cloud computing. The cloud discussion has been disruptive and everyone talks about disruption. The big data is kind of the sizzle here at EMC world, and I hear interrupts kind of the same message with cloud, but cloud's the stake. The real people are moving there right now. There's real money being made, the folks who are kind of just starting their consultancies in their businesses a couple years ago are thriving. So cloud is thriving. So talk about that cloud dimension of what networks need to be looking like to really enable true cloud scale. I think it's going to be in three steps and I'm not exactly sure. Everybody has an opinion on this, but I think there'll be three steps around cloud computing. First is folks who get their own house in order and build a private cloud. And a private cloud would be that one local data center and then they'll expand to take all their data centers and make them that private entity. And so private to private is the best way to describe it. And then beyond that, I believe the public providers are going to provide services that can provide an extension of those private environments where some call that a hybrid cloud, some call that a lot of different names. But I think there's going to be an evolution. It's going to be the private cloud. It's going to go ahead and be an extension of I'll call it a borderless data center where it goes across distance where it's not bound by distance around private environments. And the second behind that will be then how do I take advantage of the assets that exist in the public environment where I can use those assets better. It's an economic return where I can get a better economic return if I build it myself. Great. So Mike, I think we've heard from EMC at the show here. It's pivoting from private cloud to going to hybrid cloud. And we really believe that just the service providers are going to be one of the really lynch pins of some of these hybrid cloud environments. I got to hear a little bit at Brocade Tech Day about it's a really big initiative from you guys. I was wondering if you can give us, how does Brocade differentiate themselves to the service provider audience? Well, I think every service provider I've talked to today wants to be in the data center business. And every enterprise customer really is trying to go ahead and build something of a service provider architecture where they can share and build and so forth in their assets internally. What we're doing is we are taking that knowledge and know-how of how to build enterprise data centers to the service provider marketplace and providing those extensions and those technologies so they can provide those enterprise class environments for their customers. Service providers today, there's lots of them. In fact, many of them have different definitions. But really when you think about it is how do you go ahead and utilize assets the best? I mean that's at the end of the day what folks are doing. And when you want to move data from point A to point B you need a network in between it. So networks are only going to get bigger, they're going to get faster, they're going to get more dense over time. So how do you manage that? And so service providers going to take that expertise and provide it out to the enterprise space. So I heard a word from you that kind of really resonated and that's trust. So Brocade is the leader in Fiber Channel and it has worked with the storage companies. Fiber Channel's not going away anytime soon but as we look at Brocade as a big push towards Ethernet we're doing a lot with service providers. So how are you looking to take Brocade from kind of the trusted storage company into a kind of a bigger discussion of networks and clouds? Well I think we've done that in an effective manner. You're all right, we provide technology for the global 2000 accounts. In fact almost all of them. There's only a handful that haven't used our technology to run their infrastructure around the world. We also have 100,000 other customers around the world who have come to depend on our technology. We're known as providing the highest quality product in the networking space. We are going to take those attributes and bring it in to the Ethernet space. We're going to take the attributes that existed around storage area networking in all the simplification and the management and the high quality and we're bringing that into the Ethernet space. That's what in Ethernet fabric allows also. So we take the attributes, the quality attributes and the innovation attributes and we bring that into the Ethernet world. So we're bringing innovation. That's how we're going to compete in this space because frankly how you're going to differentiate yourself in this space because there are other providers out there is through innovation and so that's what we're doing in the marketplace today. You guys have a lot of experience doing your own data centers and it's well documented out in the press or in the blogs that you guys build your own data centers and we were just talking before we came on about your new facility and you were touting some of the cool things you're doing around the cooling and the solar on the roof which we'll try to get a tour in. It's a really amazing story. We'll talk about that later but you guys are kind of playing with all the tools yourself. And so with cloud, talk about some of the things you're doing that you're kind of eating your own dog food with cloud and you guys recently talked about some cloud Plex, is it? Some vertical solution. Can you talk about some of the things you're actually deploying out there and if you'd share any insight around things that you're playing with internally. Yeah, so let me talk about cloud Plex. You know, it's interesting when you talk to the, when you're going out meeting with customers, they're making architectural decisions today that will be implemented a couple years from now. And you know, frankly, we like to talk to folks and say, what are you going to do a decade from now? And so the cloud Plex architecture is exactly that. It's all the pieces. How do you use virtualization? How do you go ahead and, where do server environments fit? Where's an ethernet fabric fit? How do you do routing? And then we spend a lot of energy and time around. Is it a framework? Is it, or is it like? It's an architecture with the products, with the supporting products underneath it as customers can go ahead and use as they design their data center. So for example, one of the elements is when you want to move a virtualized machine from point A to point B, it's relatively straightforward to go ahead and to move that image across a data center. If you want to move it across distance, it becomes a little more challenging. If you want to move the corresponding 10 terabytes of storage, you go with it. It's really challenging. So there is no technologies today that exist in a unified platform. You have to use multiple platforms. This seems to be the theme out there today. You see what VMware's done with Cloud Foundry and these software frameworks. The marketplace seems to be calling for, hey, help me. There's a big solutions focus. There's a big, I don't want to say hand-holding, because I think there's some real investments. Is that kind of what you see with this cloud Plex? Is it the same kind of thing? It's exactly what it is. It is a solutions-oriented architecture that folks can go ahead and then design to. You don't have to go ahead and rip and replace. It shows how you can take your current investment and at the pace you want to go ahead and implement, you can go ahead and design in over periods of time. At the absorption rate, you can go ahead and absorb this new technology in. I was just talking with my friend Bill Schmarzo from Palo Alto and we were talking about Cisco. And earlier, Dave and I were talking about Cisco, how they've been sideways for a few years and how they kind of lost their way. You guys are obviously making up for some of that with Market Share Gains, with Brocade. But in general, we were talking about philosophy and culture and that, you know, a company like, and we're also talking about Yahoo. When a company loses its focus from their core technology, they can really kind of lose focus and kind of miss the boat. What's going on with Brocade? You guys, what's your company culture about now? What's your focus? What are you guys going to be rolling out? I know you got an earnings, not saying numbers, but like the vision. Are you guys staying right where we were before? Are you going to go deep in certain texts? Is it cloud? What is your big area you're double down in? I'm not saying it's a change in focus. In fact, we've had the exact same strategy for the past six years, which is fairly straightforward. We focus on data centers, number one. Second is service provider and then the campus environment. Those are the three markets that we focus on around the world. We really, if you can take the products that you harden in the data center and then you move them to service provider into campus environments, you have a very sound strategy. We're focusing on networking. We're really good at it and we focus on innovation. So that's how we differentiate. We have to go ahead and bring new innovative products to market. At any point in time, about two thirds of our customer base is looking for the new technology. And if you are not bringing out new technologies and you're trying to live on the legacy, you will lose your way. That's why we continue to not only protect the investment customers have, but more importantly, we make the new technologies coming out, work with the old technology. So Mike, we're here at EMC World. And historically, EMC World has been one of the largest events for Brocade of the Year. Usually the most resources, the most people. Everybody gets Brocade t-shirts, Brocade sponsors, breakfast and a party and everything like that. So maybe can you tell us what's new with the Brocade-EMC relationship? What are you announcing this week? What are you talking about and how are things going between Brocade and EMC? We've had a long marriage. I mean, you think about it. We've been married together for over 11 years now. We've been together with EMC. And it always evolves. It's always evolving and so forth. But one thing that has remained very, very constant is the fact that we provide leading edge technologies that they incorporate in their leading edge technologies to bring solutions to customers. So for example, what we've announced and what they've announced jointly together is they will be the first to bring to market the 16 gig technology that we announced all the way from the smallest form factor to the largest data center technologies that we have. And so they will be first to market and bringing that out. So that's one of the things that we announced here this week. The other theme we hear from Pat Gelsinger and it's from the EMC exec folks out here is that the, and you mentioned service providers, data centers that the enterprises are becoming essentially consumerized environments and essentially everyone's becoming a service provider. So you mentioned data center campuses and service providers. Isn't that kind of what the future company is going to look like? I mean, they're becoming their own service provider. They got to serve mobile. They got to have virtualization. They have to have a robust edge, diverse device. Any new tech in that area that's exciting you and that as companies have to become media companies and service providers. Well, yeah, I think one that's really exciting we announced and that's this Ethernet fabric product. It is taking the best that existed out of storage and all the attributes and bringing it to the Ethernet world. And by the way, when we do that, we're not doing it just because it's a new technology. We're doing it because it takes massive cost out. Somewhere between 40 and 60% of the cost just by going from a traditional Ethernet infrastructure to an Ethernet fabric, 40 to 60%. So for me, I have not yet met a customer who says hey, I got plenty of budget or I don't have any applications that are growing and my data's stagnant. Everybody's got massive data growth in the triple digits, video growth in the triple digits. And they're all trying to figure out how do I do this on a budget that's maybe growing in the single digits? So they need a new architecture. And so it is, I believe, Ethernet fabrics will probably be the most impactful product category to come out in the next decade. Within the next decade, you're going to hear everybody. Now by the way, and we've already heard it, everybody's got an Ethernet fabric, miracle. It's a miracle. They all have Ethernet fabrics. Yeah, everybody's got a cloud too. Everybody's got a cloud. The point is, I spent three years and $100 million designing the technology. And we based it off of 15 years of storage experience and seven generations of technology. So it's hard. And the world will get around. I mean, the best technology product wins in these new social networks as the word gets around. Final question for you, for me, and then Stu, you could ask your final question if you have one. What's your goal for next year? High-level goals for the company and yourself for Brocade. Tell us, so when we talk to you next year on theCUBE here at EMC World, we can look back and say, your focus this year is to do what? My focus this year is actually to have to have Ethernet fabrics established as a category. No different than 15 years ago, we had storage area networks established as a category. It will be, as a pervasive topic, when you bring somebody on here, you're going to have a conversation and all they're going to talk about is Ethernet fabrics. So that's probably my goal for most for the year is be known as the leading innovator that brought this category to market. Okay, Stu, any final questions? No, the only thing I guess I'd say is when I talk to the Wikibon community, these new terms take a while to take form. So we had to go through that maturation of cloud and there's a lot of people pushing back on fabric. So as long as we focus on its virtualization, it's the bandwidth, it's the use cases, I think we can go back and Brocade is doing a good job to be part of that discussion. Okay, we'll see how Brocade does next year. Mike, thanks for coming in. Cloud, Plex, great marketing, good framework, good roadmap for your customers. Data center, vision, good stuff. I would actually, any of your listeners, we are out in California in Northern San Jose. We have a data center we were talking about earlier, let me just add one more comment. We host about 1,000 customer briefings a year. People want to come and see what we're doing, how we're implementing the technology, how we're using it. It's an open invitation. Our data center is actually solar powered, which is fairly unique. We built our own inline cooling units, we raised the temperature in the data center. We've had thousands of folks in there right now, we won national awards, we're willing to share it with anybody to show how we're applying our technology to solve some of the problems that everybody's facing. We will bring the cube down to Brocade, we'll bring the cameras, we'll document it, we'll get a tour, have lunch. It'd be great. Great facility, very impressive. Right down on 237, we're driving to Cisco. You'll see the impressive Brocade in the sprawling, next to the sprawling Cisco campus. I'm sure they like that. Okay, Mike, thanks so much for coming on the cube.