Last Thursday, data-center hardware and services provider Brocade Communications Systems
In particular, that boost comes from the fat acquisition of McDATA that closed exactly one year before the end of the just-reported quarter. To give you a sense of scale, Brocade came up with $224 million in revenues in its first quarter of 2007. McDATA's last quarterly report, which ended in October 2006, produced $156 million in revenue. At least from here on out, you should be able to compare year-ago data on a kumquats-to-kumquats basis, rather than guess at the contribution from McDATA.
For the next quarter, management sees between $340 million and $355 million in sales, which is relatively flat compared with this quarter and year over year. GAAP earnings per share should stay about the same as this quarter, at $0.04 to $0.05 per share. An inspiring growth story this ain't.
That's a stark contrast to major competitor Cisco Systems
Management is talking up growth opportunities fueled by server virtualization and "the quest for efficiency in the data center." Networked storage plays well to both of those demands, so Brocade clearly wants the likes of VMware
Looking at these results and the near-term outlook, I'd say those growth drivers haven't quite kicked in yet. And Brocade's management would agree, noting that only about 5% of all enterprise servers are virtualized right now, with plenty of growth left to achieve.
Further Foolishness: