Brocade rolls out router subscription service

Brocade Communications Systems is an underdog in the market for large enterprise routers behind Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) and others, but this week the company announced what appears to be a first for the market--the ability for customers to subscribe for router capacity.

The Brocade Network Subscription, announced at the popular VMworld 2011 conference this week, essentially means that the enterprise customer gets the router for free, but pays for the ports they use, according to a Light Reading story. Customers can dynamically add or subtract capacity from their subscription, likely leaving them less concerned with when they actually need to buy or lease a new router.

Light Reading also reported that the service is not exactly generally available because Brocade will evaluate customer situations before offering it. The subscription service also could prove to be a way to help customers with dwindling equipment budgets get more capacity because the expense would qualify more as a maintenance expense than as an equipment expense.

For now, it might be a novel move by a market underdog trying to gain notice, but subscriptions are available for so many other things in life--why not router capacity?

For more:
- check out this Light Reading story

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Brocade acquired Foundry Networks in 2008