BrocData

So Brocade has bought McData – this will be an interesting one to watch. I got to hear the news quite early from a Brocade Professional Services consultant we have on site at the moment. The interesting thing was that this guy from Brocade had a HUGE grin on his face when he told us about the Acquisition – a bit like a child on Christmas morning. That’s always been one of the things I’ve liked about Brocade…. It tends to have a loyal staff and customer base, people who love to work for Brocade and are real advocates of their technology and products. Kind of a family feel. So after we’d had the usual jokes about what the new company name will be etc I thought Id ask him if he likes working for Brocade…. and was treated to the same huge grin again. The things he likes about the company are – attitude of the company and how personal it sometimes feels, the fact that it’s a small company and everyone kind of knows each other and they stick together….. The interesting thing for me is that these are also the reasons I’ve always kinda liked Brocade. I like the way that you feel you are getting personal treatment when you have a support case open with them. I like the way that you can get an answer quickly (probably because they are a small company). And that the answer is usually what your looking for. I like the way that you can almost speak to a firmware engineer about a problem you’re having. Basically they give the impression of caring about their customers. This is essentially the opposite to how I’ve often felt about the larger companies. The ones that make you feel like you don’t matter. The ones that take an age to get back to you and give you an answer that is not really related to your problem – have they even read our support case? The way that it seems like the different internal departments within a company don’t talk to each other, or may be have too many internal cross charges that they cant really talk to each other….. This PS consultant from Brocade is the type who won’t have a bad word spoken about Brocade – that says a lot to me. Any other vendors that are reading this – take note. mackem