"It's not about following EMC but a matter of being qualified," he said.

Brocade claims more than two million servers are attached to its storage switches, which directs traffic on more than 100,000 storage area networks (SANS).

To craft the company's new vision, Dutta said Brocade sought feedback from customers who felt the company could expand on its present offerings which led to the release of its Tapestry products which includes the introduction of a data migration module.

Dutta said there are three stages to the evolution of SANS - to connect, consolidate and control.

"But it isn't easy to maintain that control when you have invested heavily in SANS but you have 100 branch offices all with their own data; you need to bring that data back so there is the same level of response times right across the company," he said.