Foundry Networks announced a defined vision for advancing the data center along with a new wave of product innovation, which delivers on the new vision. Foundry's new data center vision and products allow data center IT managers to amplify overall data center capacity, performance, flexibility and efficiency by delivering a compelling network solution that will free organizations from the technical and physical limitations currently impeding growth. Foundry's data center vision and strategy consist of four key pillars: performance, virtualization, convergence and efficiency.

"Foundry has consistently been a networking pioneer in industry-leading performance and innovation," said Bobby Johnson, president and chief executive officer for Foundry Networks. "Foundry's advanced data center solutions reset the standard for capacity, performance, flexibility and convergence, continuing our tradition in innovation, which will enable the evolution of data centers to meet growth and performance requirements."

Maximizing Data Center Performance
With rich content, constant on-demand Internet access, and data-intensive applications and services causing the migration of many mainstream servers from gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to 10GbE connectivity, increasing data center network capacity, including the capacity of the data center interface to the backbone/Internet, becomes crucial for scaling services. In addition to increased bandwidth capacity, network latency between servers can be reduced creating noticeable benefits for the IT administrator and the end user. Foundry's data center vision and product strategy defines a comprehensive approach that integrates switching, routing and application delivery to effectively increase overall data center scalability. Foundry's long pedigree in creating high-performance networking products plays a strong role in its ability to deliver best-in-class performance while also being able to deliver unique scalability benefits that allow for industry-leading capacity headroom to protect data centers' infrastructure investment.

Consolidation of Applications and Services Through Virtualization
Consolidation of applications and services into fewer servers and network devices yields great benefits in terms of manageability, service deployment flexibility and cost-efficiency for the data center. A key trend in achieving server consolidation is through the use of virtualization software. Virtualization is further complemented by virtualized network services. Foundry's advanced data center vision and products enable IT managers to utilize virtualized network services, such as virtual LANs, multiple virtual routing, switching and security domains, and advanced application switching and service abstraction to extend the benefits of virtualization into the network, thereby accelerating consolidation of applications over a unified virtualized infrastructure. In addition to providing improved manageability, better economies of scale and rapid service deployment, these technologies also allow true traffic separation for security, regulatory compliance, or SLA enforcement as well as high availability by intelligently directing traffic to the available physical/virtual servers.

Converging Data Center Server and Storage Networks
A unified network is a crucial component in Foundry's advanced data center vision. Converging server and storage traffic over Ethernet delivers compelling benefits, including simplified network management, higher availability, and reduced capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx). Foundry's distinct approach to switching and routing emphasizes low latency without sacrificing network intelligence, advanced end-to-end quality of service (QoS) and security capabilities, which are key attributes to enabling a converged data center.

Optimizing Power Efficiency to Boost Scalability and Reduce Operating Costs
Rising power costs and limited energy supply to data centers have created a bottleneck for data center expansion. The increase in data storage, network traffic, and service and deployment complexity will drive up data center power, cooling, and space requirements, which translates into increased overall operating costs. Power, cooling and space constraints will limit data center scalability and impede business innovation and progress. Foundry effectively addresses this critical problem using a two prong solution:

• Providing industry's best-in-class power efficiency without compromising performance by optimizing watts consumed for each gigabit of actual performance (watt/Gbps). Foundry envisions this key metric as playing an important role in ensuring networking equipment power efficiency.
• Consolidating what traditionally took multiple power hungry chassis into a single, high-density and industry-leading chassis design with capacity and efficiency benefits never before available.