Oct
16

49ers Name Brocade as Stadium Partner

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

When the new home of the San Francisco 49ers opens for the 2014 NFL season, Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) will make sure the 68,500-seat new Santa Clara Stadium is ready for prime time.  The 49ers today issued more details about its agreement with the San Jose-based network solutions company.  As a Founding Partner in the new stadium, the long-term partnership makes Brocade the exclusive and official network solutions partner of the San Francisco 49ers.  In addition, the stadium’s East Field Club will be named the Brocade Club.

“This partnership with Brocade provides us a tremendous foundation as we strive to build a best-in-class networking system to support and promote the ultimate game-day experience that will differentiate this stadium from all others,” said San Francisco 49ers CEO Jed York.  “We have committed to building a stadium that represents all that is special about Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.  Aligning with Brocade as a Founding Partner drives that commitment home.”

“When two great Bay Area organizations like the 49ers and Brocade team up to combine world-class professional football with high-performance network solutions, it’s a milestone event,” said Brocade CEO Michael Klayko. “This is an opportunity for two of the world’s great technology and sports franchises to jointly showcase the power of innovation, top-tier athleticism and network agility as a game-changing fan experience.”

A goal at the new Santa Clara Stadium, as well as at the 49ers SAP Training Center, is to deliver a scalable and high performance network that’s built to meet needs well into the future, something no other stadium or team has accomplished.  Having a reliable network infrastructure is like having a good offensive line.  It works extremely hard and without much praise, but creates a crucial foundation that is hard to penetrate.  The 49ers-Brocade partnership is all about flexibility as the team will use Brocade’s network infrastructure to support all applications that will run in the new stadium.

49ers Senior Director of Technology Dan Williams has been working closely with Brocade, and feels confident this partnership will allow that goal to be attained.  With over 15 years of hands-on technology experience in top-level engineering roles, delivering leadership to some of the strongest engineering teams in the Silicon Valley, Williams has the pedigree to make that judgment.  In the last five years, he led the creation of Facebook’s network engineering team and was instrumental in scaling the company’s infrastructure capacity, as it grew exponentially and hosted 800 million monthly active users.

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