The ailing economy is leading some enterprises to put off transforming their data-center networks with emerging technologies such as FCOE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet), Brocade Communications' CTO said Thursday.

IT managers are delaying transitions to converged networks that use a single protocol across both the storage and server areas of a data center, CTO Dave Stevens said in an interview after the company announced a steep increase in revenue for its first fiscal quarter, which ended Jan. 24.

It was the first quarter since Fibre Channel storage network pioneer Brocade acquired Foundry Networks, an Ethernet LAN vendor. FCoE and Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) are two emerging standards designed to combine the strengths of Fibre Channel and Ethernet.