Last year Brocade acquired Tacit Networks, extending its competitive range to WAFS (wide area file systems) and the Tapestry family of applications and services.

At the end of 2005, Tacit extended its remote-office coverage to virtual desktops via a partnership with Softricity, a company that offers application and desktop virtualization software.

There is more: Earlier this year, Tacit acquired Mobility Software and its applications suite, which provides seamless file and e-mail backup, replication, and virtual network shares for mobile users.

Put together all of those connections, and it leads into last week's Brocade announcement of some interesting new products, including a new 32-port, 4Gbps SilkWorm 4900 switch that customers can update to 48 and 64 ports. A stand-alone iSCSI gateway was also part of the announcement, as was an FCIP (Fibre Channel over IP) routing blade for the SilkWorm 48000 and a stand-alone FCIP router.

That's all interesting, but here's the real scoop: On the same day, Brocade announced its acquisition of NuView, a small private software company based in Houston. NuView has made a name for itself in the area of file virtualization, to the point that NetApp is reselling one of its applications.