Brocade said its data center and local area network (LAN) switches now support OpenFlow, the popular open protocol for software defined networking (SDN).

The San Jose, California-based networking vendor has been supporting OpenFlow in its products for network carriers only. The new products added to the list support OpenFlow 1.3 – the protocol's latest version, which adds modern enterprise network capabilities, such as Quality of Service (QoS), Group Tables, Active-Standby Controller and IPv6, among others.

The essence of SDN is the separation of the network control plane from the packet forwarding plane. This enables network control functions to be handled by software that is independent from the underlying networking hardware, resulting in greater automation potential and lower chances of vendor lock-in.

SDN via an open protocol like OpenFlow is a departure from the norm for the networking market. Networking gear by the likes of Cisco and Juniper has traditionally been limited to being operated and managed by proprietary software by the same vendors.

Putting network intelligence in stand-alone software opens doors for commodity networking hardware – danger for the incumbent leaders' market share who have traditionally relied on the high-margin business of selling users the entire hardware-and-software package.

While both Cisco and Juniper have gear with OpenFlow support, both companies have been pushing different visions of SDN that do not include the open protocol.

Juniper's vision revolves around its Junos Contrail controller, which creates a virtual overlay network atop physical infrastructure. Cisco's play is called Application Centric Infrastructure, and the idea there is to maximum automation of network management but without OpenFlow, through the vendor's NX-OS operating system.

Brocade products that supported OpenFlow previously included its flagship MLXe core router and compact carrier Ethernet routers and switches. The company says it has shipped more than one million OpenFlow-enabled ports through sales of these products to date.

Now, its top-of-rack VDX switches for data centers and ICX switches for campus LANs also support the protocol – a clear sign that the company considers SDN a big opportunity in both segments of the networking market.

Curt Beckmann, principal architect at Brocade and member of the Open Networking Foundation, which drives development of OpenFlow, said Brocade's commitment to SDN was evident in the volume of the company's contributions to both the foundation and the protocol. “The real payoff of Brocade's standards work comes as we provide deployable and compelling SDN solutions,” he said.

The company announced the news at the Open Networking Summit in Santa Clara, California, on Monday.