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Blade Network Technologies is now IBM Systems Networking

On sept 27th 2010 IBM acquired Blade Network Technologies (BNT). With that acquisition IBM returned into the networking space. The division is now called IBM Systems Networking.

The timining is just right as a majority of customers are making the transition from 1gigabit to 10 gigabit to 40 gigabit and further. And Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) is becoming more popular.

To give a small recap of the current state of business (taken from the IBM Systems Networking website) :

IBM System Networking delivers faster, innovative and interoperable cloud offerings to help clients improve speed, intelligence and TCO for private cloud networking, as well as, scale SAN fabrics with higher performance and virtualization for private clouds. IBM System Networking’s new offerings include:

IBM RackSwitch G8316 which is IBM System Networking’s new high-speed 40 Gigabit Ethernet aggregation switch with 16x 40G ports to aggregate multiple racks of servers or 64x 10G ports using breakout cables and a powerful control plane for higher performance.

16Gbps high-speed Fibre Channel SAN backbones, switches and management solutions with significantly greater performance than competitive offerings and “pay-as-you-grow” scalability and virtualization features

IBM Networking Operating System (formerly BLADEOS) for IBM RackSwitch and BladeCenter switches, which helps increase IT efficiency and virtualization by incorporating VMready capability with support for the IEEE’s Edge Virtual Bridging (EVB) 802.1Qbg standard to bring scalable virtualization awareness to your data center network

IBM iFlow Director, which  provides flow-based load balancing for security appliances, such as deep packet inspection devices, firewalls and IDS/IPS systems, anti-virus and anti-spyware appliances and lawful intercept devices as well as wireless Internet mobile gateway appliances.

IBM Networking Element Manager (formerly BLADEHarmony Manager) now includes better integration with Tivoli, topology discovery and support for additional managed devices

OpenFlow-based IBM RackSwitch G8264 10/40 Gigabit Ethernet switch make user-controlled virtual networks easy to create, optimize performance dynamically and minimize complexity.

Source:   IBM Closes Acquisition of BLADE Network Technologies, IBM Systems Networking