Emulex CEO Blog: Jim McCluney

General George S. Patton was once quoted as saying, “Any good plan… executed today, is better than a perfect plan next week.” I am glad to report that we are executing against our plan, and this past week has provided ample proof. At our Analyst Day in October 2009, Emulex launched its OneConnect™ Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA) and outlined its strategy for network convergence. At that time, we described how Emulex had adopted a 10Gb/s Ethernet-first approach to network convergence as a strategic differentiator.

Recently, we have provided further validation of our success with new OEM announcements in partnership with HP and IBM for our OneConnect 10Gb/s Ethernet-based UCNA products that fulfill part of the vision we shared with you in October.

Let me summarize these two announcements. Yesterday, we continued our strong strategic positioning with IBM by adding three new OneConnect 10Gb/s Ethernet Network Adapters for eight IBM systems, including five IBM System x and three IBM BladeCenter server platforms. Four of these new server platforms are based on the much awaited Intel Nehalem EX chipset. These new design wins join our previously announced two design wins with IBM, including a 10Gb/s Ethernet Virtual Fabric Adapter for IBM BladeCenter that is upgradable to iSCSI and FCoE, and a 10Gb/s Ethernet Network Interface Card (NIC) for IBM System p. The three products for IBM announced yesterday include the:

1. 10Gb/s Integrated Virtual Fabric Adapter (or NIC) for IBM System x – This is the first in a new class of integrated NICs that serve as the native 10Gb/s Ethernet integration for the new IBM class of Nehalem EX-based servers. These servers include a unique card slot that will only accept this unique form factor, which enables 10Gb/s Ethernet functionality similar to that of a LOM (Local Area Network on Motherboard).
2. 10Gb/s Ethernet optional Virtual Fabric Adapter (or NIC) for IBM System x – Emulex is also delivering a standard PCIe 10Gb/s Ethernet NIC option card for IBM System x servers.
3. 10Gb/s Ethernet Integrated Virtual Fabric Adapter and optional Virtual Fabric Adapter (or mezzanine NIC) for IBM BladeCenter –Emulex is delivering a 10Gb/s Ethernet mezzanine NIC that servers as the native and optional solution for 10Gb/s Ethernet for IBM BladeCenter servers.

Last Friday, we announced three OneConnect 10Gb/s Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) UCNA design wins with HP. We have worked extensively with HP to provide deep management and product integration for HP’s Converged Infrastructure architecture. The three design wins with HP include the:

1. HP-branded FCoE Converged Network Adapter (CNA) – Emulex is now shipping the only HP-branded FCoE CNA for HP ProLiant rack and tower servers. This CNA supports TCP/IP and FCoE hardware offload concurrently today and will offer iSCSI hardware offload in mid 2010.
2. HP-branded 10Gb/s Ethernet NIC – Emulex is delivering a standard PCIe 10Gb/s Ethernet NIC for HP ProLiant rack and tower servers.
3. HP-branded 10Gb/s Ethernet mezzanine NIC– Emulex announced the availability of a 10Gb/s Ethernet mezzanine NIC, which is also fully integrated with HP’s Flex-10 virtual I/O solutions.

We all know in business, and in life, it is executing against what you say that builds credibility and character. These new OEM wins are a significant example of doing what we said we would do. This is just the beginning of executing our plans.

Jim

Our customers talk about “going green” and demand products that use less power, lower cooling costs and reduce cable counts. And, there are increasingly more and more regulatory requirements to which we must comply. However, our plans for green technology go further than that. We have a four-point plan for thinking and executing on “going green:”

1. Product Design
2. Customer and Regulatory Demands
3. Materials Reduction
4. Supply Chain Optimization

Emulex is committed to improving the environmental attributes of its products, because it is good for business, good for our partners, good for the planet and the right thing to do. In most cases, “going green” in the IT world has been focused on the consumption of watts and British Thermal Units (BTUs) and getting more Central Processing Units (CPUs) or Terabyte per square foot. These are important green technology goals, but using less materials and fully recyclable materials are also just as important for the supply chain, our Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and our own cost management. At Emulex, we are committed to using the right materials that not only meet or exceed the requirements of our customer and regulatory demands, but also provide a competitive advantage in the market. One of the key materials in our product is packaging, and we have been working on making our delivery greener in three ways: using less packaging, lowering fuel costs and using fully recyclable materials.
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In the classic 1980 movie The Blues Brothers, Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi enter “Bob’s Country Bunker” for the infamous road house scene, where, to their chagrin, the bar hostess tells them, “We have both kinds of music here, Country and Western.” You may not guess it, but this concept relates to our day-to-day business. Getting both investment projection and investment protection is really the core of the value proposition for network convergence. Technology transitions need to be as simple as possible to make them effective and valuable to any business. Network convergence will be just this type of technology transition.

Investment Projection

What do we mean by investment projection? We are referring to the ability for an IT manager to project the value of network convergence into the future with reduced capital expense, operational expense and infrastructure savings that enables greater computing density and capabilities in the same data center footprint. It is this ability to project into the future and see how IT managers can support up to 20% more virtual machines per CPU with Emulex’s vEngine™ CPU offload technology, lower administrative costs that will support allocation of IT staff to new projects and plan for more efficient IT operations to make business more competitive that are the real game-changing part of network convergence.

Investment Protection

One of the hallmarks of the technology business is that we are always looking for “the next big thing.” As we all know, “the next big thing,” is great, but IT manager have existing investments to maximize and protect. Vendors often talk about investment protection as if protocol compatibly is all it takes. However, the technology compatibility is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. It is the human, policy, regulatory and operational impact that really defines investment protection. This is one of the biggest strengths of network convergence with Enhanced Ethernet. The investment IT managers have made in policies for Fibre Channel such as logic unit number (LUN) masking, zoning, backup and replication for each application’s security and access control, business continuance policy and regulatory requirement do not change.  They remain the same. As one early beta usersaid, installing Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) was a “non-event.” This is the real definition of investment protection. On the Internet Protocol (IP) side, the same level of transparent operational smoothness can be expected.

Investment Opportunity

One of the keys to a great vs. good technology is that it can be used in many ways that the originators never envisioned. This is what we think will happen with network convergence. It not only provides the ability to project forward and protect backwards, it creates the ability to find new opportunities and best practices that we are just learning about. As we have worked with early testers, they have found new ways to implement security policies and gain efficiencies in management without breaking existing domains (IP, Storage Area Network (SAN), security, application). They have found ways to use virtual Network Interface Cards (NICs) to reduce capital costs and improve flexibility, and the list will grow as deployments get into full swing. Network convergence is not just about selling new technology; it represents the opportunity to change the strategic value of IT in our businesses.

Making 1+1=3

We see network convergence as a chance to make investment projection and protection work together to improve both…it will help 1+1=3. The goal of any coach or manager is to get more out of the team than the sum of its parts. Network convergence is a chance to look at how everything is deployed in the data center in a rational and thoughtful manner to gain economies of scale and resources. As I have said in a number of previous blogs, network convergence is an inflection process, not an inflection point. As you look more closely at network convergence, we think you will find that you can get more than just investment projection and protection. You will find that 1+1 can, in fact, equal 3.

Image Courtesy: IMDB

On October 27th we announced the channel general availability of the industry leading OneConnect™ Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA) and OneCommand™ Manager, a centralized console for network convergence infrastructure. The general availability of Emulex’s OneConnect UCNA marks our expansion into 10Gb/s Ethernet networking for Local Area Network (LAN) on Motherboard (LOMs), Network Interface Cards (NICs) and Converged Network Adapters (CNAs) that accelerate and are optimized for Internet Protocol (IP), Network Attached Storage (NAS), clustering, cloud objects and Storage Area Networks (SANs). That is a tall order for a single product, but OneConnect delivers like no other network connectivity product ever released in our industry. However, a technology without go-to-market partners is nothing more than a science project, and Emulex’s OneConnect UCNA was designed to change the connectivity market with the help of its distribution channel partners.
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October 27, 2009 has become one of the hallmark days in the long history of Emulex: today, we released our OneConnect™ Universal Converged Network Adapter (UCNA) and OneCommand™ Manager application for network convergence, and our universe will never be the same. The Big Bang theory states that the universe is in a state of constant expansion. Today is Emulex’s Big Bang: our total available market for network connectivity begins expanding again today with the OneConnect UCNA. The general availability of Emulex’s OneConnect UCNA marks our expansion into 10Gb/s Ethernet networking for Local Area Networks (LAN) on Motherboard (LOMs), network interface cards (NICs) and CNAs that accelerate and are optimized for Internet Protocol (IP), Network Attached Storage (NAS), clustering, cloud objects and Storage Area Networks (SANs). That is a tall order for a single product, but OneConnect delivers like no other network connectivity product ever released in our industry.

Expanding Leadership with IBM in Two Markets: 10Gb/s Ethernet UCNA and the Industry’s First 16Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA

Today, we announced two major design wins with IBM Power Systems, the first, a new market-expanding design win based on our revolutionary OneConnect UCNA for a 10Gb/s Ethernet NIC to drive next-generation connectivity for IBM flagship servers, and second, the industry’s first 16Gb/s Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) design win. Just last week, the ANSI INCITS T11 committee completed work on the 16Gb/s Fibre Channel standard that will accelerate high-density virtualization by doubling the number of ports that can be virtualized, improving support for higher-density, multi-processor cores, improved single-root hypervisors, high-speed storage such as solid state disk drives and next-generation server busses such as third-generation PCI Express (PCIe).

General Availability of OneConnect and OneCommand

Starting today, Emulex’s OneConnect UCNA is available in the channel, and IT managers can now begin moving toward network convergence without leaving legacy networking behind. The Emulex OneConnect UCNA architecture allows IT administrators to converge their physical networks, while maintaining their separate application, server, storage and security administration domains. This allows companies to reduce their costs for adapters, switch ports, cabling, power and cooling, without disrupting their current management structure or network segmentation configurations. In addition to OneConnect, Emulex is also releasing OneCommand Manager, which provides comprehensive and centralized management of Emulex’s OneConnect UCNAs and LightPulse® Fibre Channel HBAs. OneCommand Manager consists of a powerful suite of diagnostic tools and customizable reporting capabilities that help data center administrators optimize network performance and availability.

Expanding with Server-centric Networking

Emulex’s approach to network convergence, based on the concept of server-centric networking, means that we’re providing a single architecture and product portfolio that enables the 10Gb/s Ethernet transition for blade servers and server virtualization, while protecting current IP and Fibre Channel infrastructure. Unlike competitive 10Gb/s NICs and CNAs, Emulex’s OneConnect UCNA architecture allows end-users to purchase the base 10Gb/s Ethernet network adapter, which includes Transmission Control Protocol/IP (TCP/IP) and TCP Chimney hardware offload and outperforms any other 10Gb/s network adapter in the market today. It also enables full hardware offload for Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) or Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). Emulex’s vEngine™ technology delivers hardware offload and acceleration that reduces server overhead and increases the number of virtual machines (VMs) that can run on virtualized servers.

Emulex’s OneConnect UCNAs provide a number of critical benefits: a unique, pay-as-you-go model; the only server adapter with full hardware protocol offload support for TCP/IP, iSCSI and FCoE; the world’s fastest 10Gb/s Ethernet performance; and the ability to efficiently consolidate network and storage infrastructures without changing management domains.

Emulex is delivering a full suite of Ethernet-based input/output (I/O) products for the server that are optimized for LOM, blade and standard PCIe adapter applications, going beyond just enabling storage protocols. Emulex is leading and enabling the 10Gb/s Ethernet server transition. Our unique pay-as you-go model allows end-users to easily upgrade and scale their infrastructures with a base 10Gb/s Ethernet network adapter and field enablement options for iSCSI and FCoE hardware acceleration, providing unparalleled investment protection and virtualized server performance.

The Expanding Ecosystem

In addition to our design win and product availability announcements, we are working with key ecosystems partners today to demonstrate new solutions such as Emulex’s Virtual Fabric Adapter (VFA) for IBM BladeCenter with BLADE Network Technologies; server virtualization for Oracle RAC with Sun, Compellent and, of course, Oracle; 10Gb/s Ethernet SAN/NAS with HP, Cisco, Juniper, NetApp and EMC; server consolidation using UCNAs with Intel, Microsoft and VMware…and the list goes on. The third edition of our Convergenomics™ Guide, released yesterday, details how Emulex is working across ecosystems to build a complete set of deployment tools for IT managers.

Emulex’s Connectivity Continuum™

We are expanding our connectivity vision and markets as we seek to be the one network connectivity provider for every network. Our server-centric networking model is the future of I/O. Network convergence, blade servers and next-generation bus architectures are creating a new enterprise networking domain around server and compute resources. As we look forward, network convergence is the next step in our Connectivity Continuum vision; it will be a core enabler of the transition from today’s discrete data center to the virtual data center and on to cloud computing models.

Emulex’s Expansion Equation

As we look forward to Emulex’s market expansion opportunity, we know that no single element will enable this transition; it will be a confluence of key items.

There is more to talk about today than a single blog can cover, but we know that we have made one of the biggest announcements in the history of our company, and we know it will change our view of the universe going forward.

Jeff Benck, our COO, recently said to me, “We got the MO.” Being a Scotsman, I had no idea what he meant, so I said who is “MO?” He responded, “You know boss, Momentum!” After he explained that “MO” meant momentum, I could not agree with him more. Since we announced our OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs) in February, the momentum has been building for Emulex and the entire network convergence ecosystem. We have seen Cisco announce UCS, a new computing platform that is based solely on 10Gb/s Enhanced Ethernet, and we have seen IBM, HP, EMC, NetApp, Brocade, BLADE and others announce products that support the network convergence ecosystem.

However, this got me thinking. Many technologies have had industry support, but never became real revenue makers. So how do you measure market momentum? When does the hype become reality? How do know if you are making progress versus making yourself feel good? And when is the market going to be real? The ultimate answer, of course, to measuring all of these things is revenue from end user adoption of a technology. However, many people and analysts remain skeptical about the reality of network convergence. They ask us, if this is Ethernet-based, won’t Intel and Broadcom just commoditize this business and take it over? The answer to this question is a simple and emphatic: no.

10Gb/s Enhanced Ethernet is not your father’s Ethernet, to lift a phrase from Buick. This is not a lowest-cost wins market. Network convergence demands enterprise-class reliability, scalability and performance, and without an enterprise-hardened Fibre Channel stack, full protocol hardware offload and a unified management plan for all networks, Intel and Broadcom do not have a real network convergence story. This is why we think Emulex is well-positioned in the network convergence market to do more than replace Fibre Channel installations, but to expand into 10Gb/s iSCSI, Ethernet Network Interface Cards and other 10Gb/s Ethernet-based opportunities.

The data center is changing and a new round of infrastructure refreshes are hitting from Intel’s new Xeon 5500-based servers, data center virtualization and new storage host and back-end protocols. Every one of these technologies is based on three core tenants: they run faster, they are optimized for virtualization and they promise to reduce IT operational and infrastructure costs (power, cooling, cabling, rack space, etc.). The improved performance, virtualization and infrastructure savings provided by network convergence fit perfectly into this next data center refresh cycle.

As we said on our recent earnings call, we broke $1 million in network convergence adapter revenue in fiscal Q4 2009. We expect to more than double that number in fiscal Q1 2010, and our second generation OneConnect UNCAs have 14 design wins so far. We announced the first of these design wins publically a few weeks ago with IBM. In our business, if you have growing revenue and growing design wins, you have reasons to believe that momentum is on your side.

In the television program The A-Team, Col. Hannibal Smith, played by George Peppard, was famous for the catch phrase, ”I love it when a plan comes together.” I think that saying sums up our feelings as we partner with BLADE Network Technologies to support the new IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric solution that features Emulex’s first public OEM design win for our OneConnect Universal Converged Network Adapters (UCNAs). The Emulex Virtual Fabric Adapter (VFA) is the first instantiation of this vision and only the first of many new design wins for this platform. From the beginning of our entry into the 10Gb/s CNA (Converged Network Adapter) business, we have said that this market is first about 10Gb/s Ethernet enablement. So, it is apropos that our first public design win is for a next-generation 10Gb/s Ethernet UCNA shipped as a Network Interface Card (NIC) that enables virtual fabrics for IBM BladeCenter.

The IBM BladeCenter Virtual Fabric solution is comprised of three key elements: Read the rest of this entry »

The book Blue Ocean Strategy, by authors W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, discusses how companies have created new market segments that are often adjacent to current markets, but distinguished by how they innovate or expand the market in ways others in the past have not. One of my favorite examples is how Cirque Du Soleil turned the rapidly-declining circus industry into shows that define the next generation of stage entertainment. These new segments are characterized in the book as being new and uncontested “blue ocean” opportunities, while mature, hyper-competitive markets are characterized as bloody red oceans where the competitive waters are filled with sharks fighting over market share scraps.

Network convergence is a new blue ocean opportunity for Emulex, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and our channel partners. It is a market segment that is growing out of the existing IP and Fibre Channel markets, but it has a number of unique dynamics and demands that do not exist in the current red oceans of IP and Fibre Channel networking and which enable new levels of innovation and differentiation. What are those changes? Here are a few of the key changes that help define the new blue ocean opportunity for network convergence: Read the rest of this entry »

The biggest question CIOs ask in regard to a new technology transitions is, will this create a competitive advantage for my business? We have all seen marketing collateral, including Emulex’s own sales tools, discuss being more operationally efficient, providing greater enterprise scalability and optimizing precious business resources.  When it comes to network convergence, I am asking my management team to look at this question from the perspective of both CIOs and CEOs.  From the CIO side, are we really delivering these value propositions we espouse and from the CEO side, if we, Emulex, implement network convergence will we see the promised value?  As we expand into new markets, such as the Ethernet NIC market, with larger established players, we need to have significant competitive advantages to win.

In the emerging network convergence market, we’ll need to continue to outmaneuver our competitors  in technology development, create operational efficiencies that drive real cost savings, expand gross margins and continue to  invest in sales and marketing programs to uncover every possible opportunity in our segment. Does this list sound familiar to you? Have you seen a similar list on a whiteboard in your own planning sessions? I am willing to bet that you have. Combine these demands with overall macroeconomic conditions as they are, and we understand that CIOs, our own CIO included, face significant choices as to how and when to implement network convergence to win in a challenging and ever-changing business environment, especially as they make decisions as to whether they should utilize their operating budget to provide line of business solutions or overall infrastructure improvements.

IDC recently released its 2009 Storage Networking Infrastructure 2009-2013 Forecast, which stated, “Over the next five years, the critical challenges for storage interconnect suppliers will be to establish market leadership positions in the emerging markets for FCoE and 10GbE infrastructure. While broad adoption won’t start until 2011, late 2010 is when companies are likely to start making major architectural decisions.”*

The key word in here is “decisions.” CIOs should consider moving to Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) for their new host deployments for one of the following three reasons:

• The cost of maintenance and service exceeds the depreciation cost of new equipment and dictates upgrading their switch infrastructure
• They are starting a new server upgrade cycle based on the Intel Xeon 5500 series processors
• They are deploying a new green field application/data center, which makes implementing FCoE a simple choice based on long-term return on investment (ROI) calculations. 

Embracing the Strategic Inflection Process to Win

In my July 1 post, I talked about how technology transitions do not occur at a single point in time, but through a process that the industry undergoes to achieve a transition across the entire ecosystem, which requires a strategic decision, a vision, partnerships, resources and time to come to fruition. Emulex faced this choice several years ago, and that is exactly what CIOs are facing today. They need to evaluate their choices and make tough business decisions on the use of precious capital and human resources to make their companies ready to win. How many strategic projects can you implement on your current infrastructure and what will the ROI delta be if you move to 10Gb/s Ethernet sooner? Are you ready to scale IT capabilities when the macroeconomic conditions change? Will your competitors be ahead of you? Are you going to lead or follow? Embracing the transition to network convergence will require investment and leadership, but it should closely align with leading IT agenda items, such as data center consolidation, server virtualization, blade computing, lower operational (power, cooling, space) costs and simplified management.

Simplicity or Complexity: That Is the Key Decision

At the core of the network convergence value proposition is simplicity versus complexity. Converging networks onto a single 10Gb/s Enhanced Ethernet infrastructure will simplify the capital investment, implementation, maintenance, operations and administration of your data center. It will enable tighter policy controls, effective security and compliance support, and provide a more widely deployable set of network administration tools that can work on your entire infrastructure, not just individual segments. Continuing to maintain multiple networks will be more complex and costly for CIOs, which will limit the number of new projects that can be implemented to drive competitive advantage in their markets. 

Personally, I am asking my team to make the strategic decision to embrace network convergence, and to extend Emulex’s leadership both as a technology provider and as an operational organization. Emulex is looking at our budgets, resources and priorities with a hard eye to determine which ones will enable us to reach our goals of being more competitive and grow revenue, even in this challenging market, driving greater market share and demonstrating technology leadership. If these goals sound like the discussions you are having inside your company, I encourage you to make the strategic decision to embrace the transition to network convergence for long term investment protection.. You can read more about how to deploy network convergence in your data center in Emulex’s Convergenomics™: The Guide to Network Convergence Solutions book.

Jim

*IDC, 2009 Storage Networking Infrastructure 2009-2013 Forecast – Server Slow Down Stifles FC HBAs and Switch Sales, while Laying the Ground Work for FCoE and 10GbE, doc #218480, May/2009

The 8Gb/s Fibre Channel transition is different from the 1Gb/s to 2Gb/s and 2Gb/s to 4Gb/s transitions. The major reason why? It’s not free. The cost of optics in the 8Gb/s transition changed this predictable and smooth progression. Additionally, in each of the previous generations, the key drivers of the speed transitions were RAID (redundant array of independent disks) and tape target devices and the introduction of PCI Express. In contrast, for the 8Gb/s Fibre Channel transition, the drivers are from the host side, and this is due to a new technology trifecta…virtualization, blades and the new Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series (formerly codenamed Nehalem). These three technologies are driving and enabling greater I/O demands per system and making now the right time to move to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel.

I/O Aggregation with Virtualization

One of the realities of virtualization is that the I/O workload of many systems is aggregated onto a single or fewer systems. This drives the need for two key storage functions, networking for virtual machine (VM) mobility provided by Storage Area Networks (SANs) and performance bandwidth to handle the consolidated workloads. A recent IDC research report indicated the number of VMs per server will grow from three to four per computer processing unit (CPU) to 10 to 12 per CPU. This growth in I/O workload on a single system will require the performance of 8Gb/s Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) or 10Gb/s Ethernet Converged Network Adapters (CNAs).

Blade Connectivity Limitations

Blades are great for consolidation, environmental savings and maximizing computing density. However, they do force IT managers to be very budget conscious when it comes to their I/O connectivity choices. The limited connectivity on blade servers will quickly require the move to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel to meet the increased I/O workloads.

Intel Maximizes Virtualization and I/O Performance with its Xeon® Processor 5500 Series (Nehalem)

The Intel Xeon 5500 processor series has a number of key advancements that Emulex’s LightPulse® architecture maximizes, including:

• Intel QuickPath Interface (QPI) – Provides high-speed connections between the CPU cores, external memory and the I/O hub. This enables the same 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA to deliver 225% better performance vs. previous generations of Intel processors.
• Message Signaled Interrupts eXtended (MSI-X) – Allows CPU interrupts from multiple devices to be processed in parallel, eliminating idle time spent waiting for individual interrupts to complete. This enables Emulex to scale I/O to support more VMs per CPU.
• PCI Express 2.0 – The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series and Emulex 8Gb/s HBAs both support PCI Express 2.0, which doubles the internal bus speed for maximum performance.
• Intel Hyper-Threading Technology (HTT) – Hyper-threading allows each CPU to be divided into two threads, providing more parallel processing and better performance for multi-threaded applications. For Emulex adapters, hyper-threading doubles the number of concurrent I/O and interrupt threads, maximizing the benefit of MSI-X and NUMA support.
• Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) – The Intel Xeon 5500 processor provides complete support for Intel Virtualization Technology, which includes VT-d for improved I/O performance. VT-d support has also been added to the high-performance Emulex LightPulse 8Gb/s Fibre Channel HBA family.

Dell’Oro: Documenting the Shift to Emulex’s 8Gb

According to the Dell’Oro Group, Emulex is driving greater share in the 8Gb/s Fibre Channel transition. Our strong execution on 8Gb/s Fibre Channel qualifications, vEngine I/O offload architecture, leading position with server virtualization, performance, scalability and proven enterprise reliability are enabling Emulex to gain share in the 8Gb/s Fibre Channel market transition.

Positioning for the Future

Beginning the transition to 8Gb/s Fibre Channel is a smart move for customers and partners, it will enable them to capitalize on the value of their new Intel Xeon 5500 processor-based system investments, maximize their consolidation with blades and provide the most scalable I/O solution for virtualization platforms during the next CPU cycle.