One of Brocade's founders co-wrote the Fibre Channel standard, then built a company to sell the switches it needed. By 1999, big companies were drowning in data stuck on disks bolted to single servers. Brocade's switches tied many servers to many storage arrays over fast fiber links, a setup called a storage area network. When the San Jose company filed to go public, it was selling the plumbing for a new kind of data center.

A Racer, an Engineer, a Builder

Brocade started in August 1995. Seth Neiman was a venture capitalist, a former Sun Microsystems executive, and a professional race car driver. Kumar Malavalli co-wrote the Fibre Channel specification. Paul Bonderson came from Intel and Sun. Their bet was that storage would split away from the servers that used it. If it did, every data center would need a switch in the middle. Brocade's SilkWorm switches aimed to be that switch.

The SilkWorm Years

Brocade priced its IPO at $19 a share on May 25, 1999, and traded on Nasdaq as BRCD. Storage networks spread fast, and Brocade became the leading maker of Fibre Channel switches. In 2008 it bought Foundry Networks to move into Ethernet gear. Broadcom agreed to buy Brocade in November 2016 for $5.9 billion, or $12.75 a share. The deal closed in November 2017, and Broadcom sold off the Ethernet business to Arris.

Cover: Tying Thread, from the series "Women's Handicrafts: Models of Dexterity", Kitagawa Utamaro. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a woman tying silk thread (Brocade, SilkWorm, fiber).