Broadcom: Industry's First Enterprise Network Controller with DASH Manageability Support

DASH is a web services-based management technology that enables IT professionals to remotely manage desktop and mobile PCs from anywhere in the world, securely turn the power on/off, query system inventory, and push firmware updates among other things, regardless of the state of the remote PC. With active participation in the DMTF, Broadcom is the first to deliver an enterprise-class controller product with DASH manageability and is a leader in driving the DASH initiative forward.

Managing desktop and mobile systems in multi-vendor, distributed enterprise environments creates a critical challenge to today's administrators as they are required to master a disparate set of tools and applications. The tools are mainly proprietary or specialized, and must be adapted specifically to each individual corporate enterprise resulting in an increased cost of ownership and a lack of efficiency and consistency when managing desktop and mobile systems. To address these challenges, the DMTF's desktop and mobile work group (DMWG) unveiled the DASH Management Initiative - a suite of specifications that delivers a standards-based web services management platform for desktop and mobile systems. DASH is a comprehensive framework for managing these systems that emphasizes interoperability, security and deployment efficiency.

"As the market share leader of enterprise client LAN solutions and an original founder, long time driver and key contributor to the DMWG and the DASH initiative, Broadcom is committed to deploying standards-based management solutions to our enterprise customers," said Greg Young, Vice President and General Manager of Broadcom's High-Speed Controller line of business. "As a result, Broadcom is the first in the industry to provide DASH-enabled solutions in 2007, with cooperation from leading OEMs as part of our industry leading line of Gigabit Ethernet controller chips. Our support for DASH reinforces Broadcom's commitment to the DMTF standards and to driving emerging standards-based technology."

In support of the new DASH initiative announced by the DMTF, Broadcom announced a new two-chip solution that includes the Broadcom® BCM5757 network controller with an integrated BCM5758 applications processor. Broadcom's DASH management solution is the first available in the industry and will soon be available through leading PC OEMs. The combined BCM5757 and BCM5758 DASH solution will be demonstrated this week at the Microsoft Management Summit in Broadcom's booth #615 and in the DMTF booth #613.

Broadcom's scalable controller architecture, combined with highly optimized firmware and software, enables extremely low power and cost effective management functionality for in-band, out-of-band and out-of-service environments. The on-chip processor and memory allow the BCM5757 and BCM5758- based implementation to be highly secure and less vulnerable to system component failures than proprietary client management solutions that have been recently introduced. The integrated BCM5758 applications processor has enough processing power to handle all of the DASH capabilities on-chip without utilizing other system resources. This includes support for the web services management (WS-Man) software stack, common information model (CIM) profiles, Class A and Class B security featuring authentication, encryption and identity management, and mechanisms for discovering management services.

Converse to this centralized approach, some proprietary client manageability solutions require an increase in system memory, since the management firmware runs on system memory, as well as constant power for many components on the platform even when the system is in sleep state. As a result, competing client manageability solutions increase power consumption, which in turn, increases total cost of ownership for IT.

"The DASH initiative represents an industry-wide effort to help lower the total cost of managing PCs," said Brian Schmitz, Director of Business PC Product Marketing, Hewlett Packard Company. "HP and Broadcom are committed to driving and supporting secure, standard-based client management solutions. We applaud Broadcom's leadership role in driving and enabling the new DASH management initiative with its network controller products announced today."

"Managing a variety of desktop and mobile systems within an enterprise can be costly and complex for IT departments. Standards-based management interoperability allows the industry to lower these costs and reduce complexity," said Ben Williams, Vice President, Commercial Strategy and Solutions, AMD. "The success of DASH will be predicated on the interoperability of products in the enterprise and we are pleased to see Broadcom's early support for DASH in the new BCM5757 network controller, which works seamlessly with AMD processors and I/O chipsets."

"LANDesk embraces standards-based manageability and views DASH-based technology as complimentary to our vision for leading the delivery of service- oriented management," said Steve Workman, Vice President of product management for LANDesk, an Avocent company. "LANDesk's management solutions work seamlessly with Broadcom's network controllers to provide IT professionals with end-to-end management solutions for the enterprise mobile and desktop platforms" - Broadcom.