Last year, 2014, was our first presence at Aruba Atmosphere – for myself and for Brocade – and we were graciously welcomed by the Airheads community. As new Aruba partners we had a great opportunity to showcase unified wired/wireless solutions., featuring demonstrations of our integration points with AirWave and ClearPass. Additionally, as a leader in Software-Defined Networking (SDN), our breakout sessions drew a lot of attention and we received a lot of interesting feedback from the community about their views on SDN in the campus.
Over the past year, the partnership has grown stronger with delivery of the promised joint software integration and many joint customer deployments and success stories. We’ve worked jointly to make the customer experience seamless across the wired and wireless networks for both end-users and network administrators – with joint software development and unified technical support services. Customers like Levi's (SF 49ers) Stadium, Kilgore College and Westmark School attest to the importance and value of this partnership.
Capping this year of success, we’re excited to return to Atmosphere again this March to show how far we’ve come and talk about what’s coming next. We’ll have demonstrations of unified monitoring and security management with Brocade Network Advisor, Aruba AirWave and ClearPass and presentations in the Technology Playground. Be sure to ask us our newest integration: a unique subscription financing option for joint Brocade Aruba solution deployments that can simplify how to purchase your new wired and wireless network with no capital investment – perhaps for no more than you’re already paying to maintain your old network.
Brocade continues to heavily invest in SDN and we’ve elected to focus our breakouts on that topic again. Last year most of attendees said that while they were familiar with SDN and knew that it would become prevalent in networking, few actually had any experience with it. They were hungry for information on how to prepare for the oncoming wave to ensure their organizations could achieve the promised competitive edge SDN will provide.
The SDN market has continued to evolve over the past year. We’re seeing a significant transition in the use of SDN from academics and techies developing custom applications to the delivery of packaged SDN hardware, software and applications that “real” users can put to work out of the box. Brocade has continued its development of SDN with the release of the Brocade Vyatta Controller, based on the OpenDaylight Project, expanding its support for OpenFlow 1.3 across the Campus ICX switch family and more hardware and software in the works that will be announced in the coming months.
We’re looking forward to hear from attendees at Atmosphere about their experience with SDN. Have you seen progress in the SDN arena? Do you have a vision for SDN in your campus network deployment? Are you ready for SDN?
To see what you can do with SDN today, come to our breakout session, “Implementing SDN in the Enterprise Campus Network.” We’re holding it twice:
- Tue 3/3 3:15-4:30pm
- Wed 3/4 10:30-11:45am
And, be sure to stop by our booth and presentations in the Technology Playground. We’d love to talk with you about integrated wired/wireless network solutions and SDN. You can read more about our partnership with Aruba on our website here.
Brocade looks forward to seeing you at Atmosphere 2015!