SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - May 22, 2012) - Brocade^® (NASDAQ: [ BRCD ]) and NEC Corporation of America ([ NEC ]) today announced an expanded collaboration to bring to market combined solutions around Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and OpenFlow switching, including network virtualization.

Brocade and NEC will jointly market solutions for network virtualization, large-scale data center infrastructure management, traffic engineering and Wide Area Network (WAN) flow management, with an open standards-based approach. Brocade and NEC will market these high-value solutions built around Brocade's OpenFlow-enabled products and NEC's award-winning Programmable Flow Controller.

As part of the collaboration, Brocade and NEC are committing to ongoing certification, interoperability and solution validation testing. To this end, Brocade and NEC will establish joint solution labs in key regional offices to test and demonstrate their solutions. The current Brocade and NEC OpenFlow-enabled products successfully completed interoperability testing in 2011.

Brocade and NEC are collaborating on technology and implementation alignment, including OpenFlow standards, tunnel technology and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to help ensure ongoing innovation and seamless deployment by joint customers.

Brocade and NEC recently demonstrated their technology and joint solutions at the Open Networking Summit 2012 in Santa Clara, California and Interop, Las Vegas. Additional demonstrations are planned for upcoming industry events, including Interop Tokyo (June 13 to 15, 2012).

"The combined NEC and Brocade SDN solutions will give customers the ability to design, deploy, monitor and manage secure, multi-tenant networks from a single point of control," said Mitsuhiro Murooka, vice president, NEC Enterprise Technologies IT. "Brocade and NEC customers will be able to achieve greater service agility, granular traffic control and significant productivity gains by adopting a software-defined network architecture."

"Through standards-based solutions like OpenFlow, the SDN and underlying network can be coupled to optimize service performance and cost. A key objective for Verizon is to virtualize the network and converge the orchestration of the virtualized networks with VMs in the data centers to create a true cloud," said Stuart Elby, vice president, network architecture and technology, Verizon, and founding board member of Open Networking Foundation (ONF).

"Stronger definition of network behavior in software is a growing trend, and open interfaces are going to lead to faster innovation," said Dan Pitt, executive director, Open Networking Foundation. "We are excited to be joined by leading global companies to help develop and implement advanced networking capabilities for today's operators and enterprises."

"SDN enables network operators to rapidly deploy innovative services and access powerful analytics through programmatic control, unlocking the intelligence of their data center and wide area networks," said Ken Cheng, vice president and general manager, service provider business, Brocade. "Our collaboration with NEC ensures we deliver high-value solutions that can be seamlessly deployed in our customers' networks to realize the benefit of SDN."

Software-Defined Networking and OpenFlow Solutions
In June 2010, Brocade was one of the first major networking vendors to [ publicly endorse OpenFlow ], which is a major component of a new approach to networking called SDN. SDN involves several components, including standards-based [ OpenFlow ], which delivers to service providers and network operators granular control of their network infrastructures. Brocade delivers OpenFlow capabilities across its high-performance switching and routing products, enabling flow control up to 100 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) speeds. With its partners, Brocade builds compelling cloud networking solutions for service providers and network operators worldwide. These solutions alleviate the burden of operational complexity for customers that are building and managing hyper-scale cloud infrastructures.

About NEC ProgrammableFlowController
NEC was first to market with a generally available OpenFlow network solution, called ProgrammableFlow. Version 2 of its ProgrammableFlow Controller, the PF6800, won the Grand Prize and the Management, Monitoring and Testing category at Best of Interop 2012. The ProgrammableFlow software separates out the physical network from the control layer, providing customers new levels of flexibility and control to quickly deploy network services and gain the benefits of Software-Defined Networking. The PF6800, which leverages OpenFlow standardized technology, used in combination with the Brocade OpenFlow-enabled product family, eliminates most of the configuration management in traditional networks and transforming network monitoring and management by integrating real time network monitoring with remediation.

About OpenFlow and the ONF
The OpenFlow protocol is being standardized by [ Open Networking Foundation ] (ONF). Founded in 2011 by Deutsche Telekom, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Verizon and Yahoo!, ONF is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to rethink networking and quickly and collaboratively bring to market standards and solutions. ONF will accelerate the delivery and use of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) standards and foster a vibrant market of products, services, applications, customers and users; it includes 70 member companies (including Brocade and NEC).

About NEC Corporation of America
Headquartered in Irving, Texas, NEC Corporation of America is a leading provider of innovative IT, network and communications products and solutions for service carriers, Fortune 1000 and SMB businesses across multiple vertical industries, including Healthcare, Government, Education and Hospitality. NEC Corporation of America delivers one of the industry's broadest portfolios of technology solutions and professional services, including unified communications, wireless, voice and data, managed services, server and storage infrastructure, optical network systems, microwave radio communications and biometric security. NEC Corporation of America is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NEC Corporation, a global technology leader with a presence in 44 countries and more than $37.5 billion in revenues. For more information, please visit [ www.necam.com ].

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About Brocade
Brocade (NASDAQ: [ BRCD ]) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. ([ www.brocade.com ])

Brocade, Brocade Assurance, the B-wing symbol, DCX, Fabric OS, MLX, SAN Health, VCS, and VDX are registered trademarks, and AnyIO, Brocade One, CloudPlex, Effortless Networking, ICX, NET Health, OpenScript, and The Effortless Network are trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. Other brands, products, or service names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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