Webbing telcom companies

In an attempt to compete with Cisco on a grander scale, Brocade is poised to buy Foundry Networks for nearly $3 billion.
As a maker of hardware and software that connects corporate servers and data storage, Brocade is thinking that the acquisition can round out their offerings with network switching and routing systems. Plus, with the U.S. military and intelligence agencies Foundry brings to the table can’t hurt either.
The combined company will enable both Brocade and Foundry to exit out of their niche roles and catapult them into a more networking technology leader. The reason for this, as the WSJ goes on to point out, is that many networking devices have difficulty connecting to each other and have contributed to high energy costs and wasted space in the datacenter. Why would you want to purchase two products when one will suffice? What the WSJ does not talk about is the administrative and human resource costs associated with building and maintaining this type of infrastructure. Green technology aside, it just makes sense to purchase products that combine key components of the networking infrastructure. Probably a good move regardless of the huge fluctuations in stock price this generated.