Networking solutions specialist Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) has partnered with storage firm EMC (NYSE: EMC) to automate the management of joint EMC and Brocade storage area networking (SAN) environments, the latest in a bevy of announcements EMC has made this week.

With network storage needs on the rise, businesses are looking to leverage monitoring and analytics tools to squeeze the maximum performance from the network. The partnership is aimed at companies with virtualized and cloud environments that require a more holistic view of alert monitoring of their storage networking resources.

Brocade Network Advisor SAN management software, sold through EMC as Connectrix Manager Converged Network Edition (CMCNE), is now integrated with the EMC’s new ProSphere 1.6 cloud storage management software, allowing businesses to navigate from ProSphere to CMCNE to evaluate alerts, analyze performance or make changes to their SAN switch infrastructure from one screen.

ProSphere storage resource management software, which tracks consumption trends is designed to meet the needs of growing and highly virtualized data centers, includes capacity dashboards and reporting capabilities that feature enhanced integration with EMC’s Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP).

In addition, the ProSphere/CMCNE integration allows administrators to combine storage and SAN management functions. Along with CMCNE integration, ProSphere v1.6 includes new reporting capabilities to support the latest enhancements to the VMAX family and integration with the recently announced Unisphere for VMAX.

CMCNE supports Fibre Channel SANs, including 16Gbps platforms, Fibre Channel over Ethernet networks, Layer 2/3 IP networks (including those running Brocade VCS Fabric technology), wireless LANs, application delivery networks and multiprotocol label switching networks in service provider environments.