Brocade continues to invest in new IP with new acquisitions

BANGALORE, INDIA: Brocade announced its intent to acquire Connectem, a privately-held company in the LTE virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) market.

The continued explosive growth of traditional mobile data combined with emerging requirements around machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity place new demands on mobile networks. To meet these challenges, mobile operators are looking to the power of virtualization to create flexible, scalable, and easy-to-deploy packet cores.

Connectem provides highly-differentiated vEPC solutions with unique architectural attributes that leverage cloud computing, network virtualization, and software networking technologies to deliver higher scale and efficiency on industry-standard x86-based servers. Connectem software focuses on mapping mobile workloads to cloud resources, eliminating the constraints of physical equipment boundaries yet still maintaining the capablity to integrate with traditional node-based EPC architectures.

Connectem's vEPC solutions integrate seamlessly with Brocade's software and physical networking product portfolios to deliver New IP data center infrastructure.

"This acquisition reaffirms our SDN and NFV strategy," said Ken Cheng, CTO and Senior VP of Corporate Development and Emerging Business for Brocade. "We believe the Connectem technology is a key enabler for emerging markets including IOT, M2M, Industrial Internet, and enterprise mobile data services."

The acquisition of Connectem is another key component of Brocade's transformative investment strategy, complementing the acquisitions of Vyatta, Vistapointe, and the recently-announced SteelApp virtual ADC product line from Riverbed.

The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of fiscal 2015.