GZS, one of many companies that are choosing to implement FICON with Brocade SilkWorm Directors, also cited IBM's full range of support and certification as additional reasons for the decision to deploy Brocade Directors.

GZS, which develops and sells professional solutions for settling cash-free credit card payments and intelligent transaction-processing products, has for several years stored its data in a SAN using switches from Brocade. Last year, the company upgraded to SilkWorm 12000 Directors for improved performance and availability in its open systems environment. With the installation of the new Brocade FICON Directors, GZS has now also standardized its mainframe environment on Brocade technology, gaining the technical and economic advantages of FICON. By using FICON-based directors, GZS also seeks to take advantage of Brocade Secure Fabric OS(R), the industry's first policy-based fabric security solution developed to provide the entire fabric with the extremely high levels of security and data protection.

"We decided in favor of SilkWorm 12000 Directors from Brocade because we have very strict requirements for scalability, high availability, reliability, and security," explained Georg Wesp, head of systems/configuration and mainframe manager at GZS. "Our customers have the highest demands where security and availability of their sensitive data is concerned. So we rely completely on our storage network."

"Many mainframe users are implementing FICON for better performance, simpler configuration management, and many other benefits, while at the same time reducing costs," said Ulrich Plechschmidt, Brocade Regional Director Central Region. "With Brocade FICON Directors, GZS is now optimally equipped for the future and can look forward to the growing demands in storage with peace of mind."