Storage specialist Brocade has "quietly put itself up for sale", according to a report in the Wall Street Journal citing "people familiar with the situation".
Potential suitors are reported to include HP, but other vendors such as Cisco, IBM and Oracle could also be in the running.
A potential reason for Brocade's actions could be the continuing drop in the price of 10Gbit/s Ethernet ports, which could damage sales of the fibre channel networking hardware used by large corporates to attach server hardware to corporate storage area networks.
Brocade acquired a standard IP switch maker in Foundry Networks over a year ago, and launched new IP switches in May this year.
As enterprises look to take cost out of their businesses due to the recession, a network based on a lower cost Ethernet system that most IT administrators are familiar with, could prove tempting for firms.
Either way, having both a fibre channel network and an Ethernet network, could be too costly for some firms to bear.
