"From a switch maker? That's not usually the channel you go to for that kind of stuff," he said. "That is the trend, though, because software and services is where the bucks are and hardware is such a commodity, even though their switches are still kind of pricey."

Rick Curry, vice president of infrastructure engineering at Union Bank of California in San Francisco, said in e-mail comments that he wouldn't likely purchase storage management software from Brocade. "I'd rather align with a storage management solution that is more vendor neutral.

"What I would find appealing is software running in the fabric that could off-load more costly server or storage processor cycles," he said. "That said, the licensing strategy of these products, as well as the technical maturity/functionality, would also have to be competitive."

Greg Schulz, an analyst with research firm StorageIO in Stillwater Minn., said Brocade's Tapestry is more of an umbrella for several technologies or a "marketing name like HDS TagmaStore, HP StorageWorks, IBM TotalStorage, Sun StorageTek and so forth. They need to evolve from re-branding and step out and expand and find new applications for the intelligent switch platform," he said.

Neither Crain nor Buiocchi would comment directly on personnel departures, but did say that the resignations have not effected company morale. "We lost a few people who were more on the administration, financial and human resources side and some staff personnel, but we haven't lost any operational folks," Buiocchi said. "The guys who sit around the table and run the actual business are the same guys today."