Combined with the social environment, this is the biggest driver of business in routers. Brocade has a limited window of opportunity with the MLX to be the market leader, as it can reasonably be expected that within a year somebody will have a better, cheaper router on the market. This implies that the pace of technological change is a threat to Brocade, yet it is actually an opportunity, with Brocade being the technologically superior company today. If it can maintain its technological leadership, Brocade will be to be able to grow its business steadily over the coming years. The legal environment is not particularly challenging for Brocade. The company is not subject to any major legal action. The biggest difficult that Brocade has is protecting its intellectual property rights overseas. Brocade will need to manage its patents effectively in order to maintain these rights, which are essential to the company maintaining its technological competitive advantage. The environmental environment is not a major issue, although there is some concern with wastage from consumer electronic goods. This concern, however, has failed as of yet to manifest itself as a major direct threat to Brocade.

The most significant threat to Brocade, however, is that of competition. The company faces two larger, more well-financed competitors in Cisco and Juniper. In addition, there are a number of low cost producers, mainly in Asia, that are undercutting the MLX product as well. The position of the MLX is as a value proposition, with high quality at a low price, yet to be realistic, there are higher quality routers and there are lower-priced routers as well. Thus, Brocade must be very careful with respect to its competitive positioning. This implies that it must address carefully the threat posed by technological change and it must also be willing to engage in a little bit of price competition as well. There is a fine line with this strategy that Brocade will either price so low as to lose money or price so high as to reduce its market share potential.

It is also worth noting the threat represented by the economy. Even if Brocade outflanks...

Thus, there needs to be some uptick in the economic environment in the coming months in order for this strategy to succeed. Brocade cannot rely on organic growth in the industry, it must cultivate that growth by convincing companies to buy new routers. If Brocade can overcome the reluctances on the demand side that comes with an economic downturn, then the company has a good chance of being successful with its chosen strategies.
There is no doubt that Brocade has a good router, and a good plan to use this router to introduce customers to other Brocade products. The strategy, however, hinges on the ability of Brocade to deliver the price/quality ratio that will entice buyers to the product in the first place. The pace of technological change is rapid, and as a result the window to successfully execute this strategy is relatively short. Brocade must therefore move both quickly and aggressively to leverage its competitive advantages to increase its market share with the new MLX router. If it does so, there is market share for the taking, and a value proposition could indeed allow Brocade to leverage the MLX to increase its market share.

Works Cited:

Bonney, J. (2010). Manufacturers group sees 'slow growth' for economy. The Journal of Commerce. Retrieved December 12, 2010 from http://www.joc.com/logistics-economy/manufacturers-group-sees-%E2%80%98slow-growth%E2%80%99-economy

Donoghue, a. (2008). at&T: Internet to hit full capacity by 2010. CNet News. Retrieved December 12, 2010 from http://news.cnet.com/2100-1034_3-6237715.html

Kerner, S. (2010). Brocade unleashes 15.36 terabit per second core routing platform. Enterprise Networking Planet. Retrieved December 12, 2010 from http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/news/article.php/3903741/Brocade-Unleashes-1536-Terabit-Per-Second-Core-Routing-Platform.htm

Newman, D. (2004). Adtran serves up newest low-cost router. Network World. Retrieved December 12, 2010 from http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2004/112204rev.html