All this "merged SAN and LAN" just sounds like a very expensive version of iSCSI, which doesn't seem to have taken over the market like the vendors were screaming it would. I like having LAN and SAN separate, and we have some SAN bottlenecks where we're gagging for 8Gb - I'd not want to have to lump those bottlenecks onto a "merged Ethernet" where it will have to compete with LAN traffic for bandwidth. I can't help thinking this merged mumbo-jumbo is just CISCO trying to beat out Brocade by turning the SAN discussion into a LAN one.

In the meantime - go Brocade! If they can make network switches as well as they make SAN ones I'll be taking a look at them.

As much as I love the fact that Cisco SAN doesn't sell too well, due to Cisco being a *network* (read ethernetwork) company, I hate to see Brocade going in the same miserable direction.

Cisco knows how to do ether, Brocade knows how to do SAN. Why not make a Joint Venture between Brocade and Cisco. Cisco dishes it's sickling SAN stuff, Brocade dishes the LAN/WAN stuff. And the Joint Venture does the Data Centre Network technology based on 10Gbps, getting LAN/WAN knowledge from Cisco, SAN and Core manufacturing knowledge from Brocade?

That would create one hell of a company, if only joshua judd would lead the technical side of it :D

Paris, because she knows how to plug a hole.