Today's Gossip Thread: Brocade Deals

Storage networking specialist Brocade(BRCD Quote) may have some lucrative new partnerships up its sleeve, potentially increasing the pressure on rival Cisco(CSCO Quote).

Hewlett-Packard(HPQ Quote) already sells Brocade's Fibre Channel switches as part of what is known as an Other Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) deal. This partnership may now be expanded to include technology from Brocade's acquisition of Foundry Networks, according to Kaushik Roy, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan.

"We believe H-P may sign an OEM deal for Ethernet/Foundry products in the not too distant future," he wrote, in a note released Friday. Although H-P would have to avoid any overlap with its existing ProCurve products, Roy estimates that a deal could eventually be worth more than $100 million a year to Brocade. ...