A Solid History of Mainframe Innovation Continues Through Storage and Networking Technologies An Interview With Lloyd Carney, CEO of Brocade By Denny Yost B | Enterprise Executive | May/June 2013 nterprise Executive recently caught up with Brocade innovative team of mainframe experts in the industry who Communications (Brocade) CEO Lloyd Carney to have been part of that Brocade family tree for many years. discuss the company’s long history of providing Enetworking technologies supporting both ESCON and EE: What is Brocade’s history with IBM? FICON, its relationship with IBM and growth opportunities in the mainframe market. Carney: It parallels the history with mainframe technology I just mentioned. We have a close working partnership with Enterprise Executive: Lloyd, please tell us a little about IBM System z in Poughkeepsie and IBM’s storage team in Brocade. Tucson. We hold multiple technical-interlock meetings with IBM each year. During these interlocks, we exchange Lloyd Carney: Brocade is a company forged out of the data product roadmaps and development ideas. We have a Joint center that has delivered networking technologies in the Development Agreement (JDA) with IBM that has led to most mission-critical IT environments throughout our some innovative technologies for our mutual customers, 17-year history. We’re a pure-play networking company with including several co-patents with IBM on ESCON and a complete portfolio for enterprise and service provider FICON-related technologies. customer segments as well as a broad number of vertical industries. Brocade is also a pioneer and the undisputed EE: Why is the mainframe still a relevant technology today? leader in the Fibre Channel storage area networking market, which has given us opportunities to form strategic Carney: The IBM mainframe is the Mark Twain of IT; reports partnerships with companies such as IBM. of its death have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, mainframes are alive and well, and are continuing to deliver business value EE: What is Brocade’s history with mainframe technology? to the companies that depend on them. The IBM mainframe is still extremely relevant technology in 2013. All 50 of the Carney: Brocade has a long, unique history with mainframe world’s top global banks depend on the IBM System z to run technology going back more than 25 years to 1987 and bus the most sophisticated, I/O-intensive transactions on the and tag channel extension. Our corporate “family tree” planet. More than 20 of the 25 largest U.S. retailers continue to includes companies such as Data Switch, Computerm, run their businesses on IBM mainframes. Brocade is proud Inrange, CNT, McDATA and Foundry Networks. We that our FICON directors account for more than 80 percent of developed and manufactured many generations of products the installed storage area networking infrastructure in these supporting both ESCON and FICON technologies, including global enterprises. They’re our most important and valued the DCX 8510, which is our ninth-generation FICON director. customers, and it’s an honor that we’re trusted for their We also have a rich history and a complete portfolio for mission-critical infrastructure. mainframe/data center extension through technologies such as Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP), which is now in its seventh EE: Beyond the well-established markets, are there growth generation of release. That vast experience is now leading us opportunities left for mainframes? to become the trusted IP networking provider for utility computing, grid computing and real-time software Carney: Certainly, there are still many growth opportunities replication. Of course, behind all that is a great team of for mainframe and FICON markets in the emerging people. We have the best, brightest, most skilled and countries and regions such as the BRIC countries of Brazil, Enterprise Executive | May/June 2013 May/June 2013 | Enterprise Executive | C “All 50 of the world’s top global banks depend on the IBM System z to run the most sophisticated, I/O-intensive transactions on the planet. More than 20 of the 25 largest U.S. retailers continue to run their businesses on IBM mainframes.” ~ Lloyd Carney Russia, India and China. More than 180 new companies with IBM for the System z and with other companies with have joined the System z community since 2010, one-third their respective solutions. of those are from fast-growing countries such as Brazil, One area that’s very exciting in this arena is what IBM South Africa, Turkey, Russia, China and India. We see the is doing with long-distance replication for mainframe trend reflected in the growth of our mainframe-related customers. Specifically, GDPS (Geographically Dispersed product business as well as our storage networking solutions Parallel Sysplex) Active-Active continuous availability in those same countries. The one advantage customers in (GDPS/A-A) is a fundamental paradigm shift for near- these regions have is their ability to deploy the latest- continuous availability solutions. It allows our mutual generation technologies, including the Brocade Gen 5 Fibre customers to reach unlimited distances between their data Channel/FICON solutions, that will provide them the most center sites and achieve the recovery time objectives of one state-of-the-art capabilities and features. minute or less, previously only available in a metro area solution. GDPS/A-A is two or more sites, separated by EE: What is the mainframe’s role in the evolution of key IT unlimited distances and having the same data, with cross- trends such as cloud, Software-Defined Networking (SDN) site workload monitoring and balancing. GDPS/A-A is and virtualization? planned to be delivered over time, and we’re examining and working on development efforts with IBM. Carney: The IBM mainframe has always been at the forefront in the evolution of IT trends. Let’s look at EE: What key technological advancements has Brocade virtualization for a moment. IBM pioneered the concept of introduced recently for the mainframe market? virtual storage on S/370 in the early ’70s. The famous August 1972 IBM System/370 Advanced Function announcement Carney: We’ve introduced several enhancements in introduced four new IBM mainframe operating systems: our Fibre Channel operating system known as FOS, or DOS/VS (DOS with virtual storage), OS/VS1 (OS/MFT with Fabric OS. There are several more currently undergoing virtual storage), OS/VS2 (OS/MVT with virtual storage, qualification at IBM Poughkeepsie with our latest operating which would grow into SVS and MVS) and VM/370. system release (FOS 7.1). For example, we’ve added some Multiple Virtual Storage (MVS) is still with us in the form of enhanced diagnostics features to FICON CUP that will z/OS. The concept of virtual machines has been around for allow for integration of our FICON directors with the IBM more than 40 years now, thanks to the IBM mainframe. As z/OS Health Check functionality. We made some significant far as cloud computing goes, thanks to that pioneering work enhancements to our FOS Extended Fabrics feature that will in virtualization, the IBM mainframe and today’s System z simplify buffer credit management for applications such as were clouds before cloud was a word. Few people realize that multisite Disaster Recovery (DR). We’ve also recently the first Storage Area Network (SAN) was ESCON. And as introduced some exciting, new technologies that will allow far as SDN goes, I think the modern System z led the way customers to more efficiently utilize their cross-site with the z/OS Communications Server. bandwidth, as bandwidth between sites is the most expensive cost in any DR architecture. Anything Brocade EE: What is Brocade’s current R&D strategy for the can do to enable our customers to improve performance mainframe market? and reduce costs over those DR networks is a win-win for the customer and for Brocade. Carney: Brocade is a customer-centric company. We take very seriously our customers’ input and suggestions for EE: How much longer will Brocade continue to invest in the feature enhancements and new capabilities. Many of these mainframe market? recommendations still come from our mainframe/FICON customers. We then focus a good part of our R&D efforts on Carney: Brocade will continue to invest in the mainframe developing these requested enhancements. market for as long as there are mainframes, which likely We’re also an active participant with leadership roles in means for a long time to come. EE the various standards bodies, as well as mainframe-centric users groups such as SHARE, CMG and Guide-SHARE Denny Yost has more than 30 years of mainframe and IT experience. He is the associate publisher and editor-in-chief of Enterprise Executive and associate Europe. Finally, those technical interlock meetings with publisher of Enterprise Tech Journal. IBM I mentioned earlier lead to co-development efforts Email: [email protected] D | Enterprise Executive | May/JuneMay/June 2013 2013 | Enterprise Executive | Copyright ©2013 Enterprise Systems Media, Inc..