Networking and storage technology solutions provider QLogic made their earnings call recently (transcript posted on Seeking Alpha) in the rough seas of the cloud and they’re still looking very good. The company has been pressing into the Fiber Channel switch market as well as a very real silicon angle involving the Sandy Bridge processor. CEO Simon Biddiscombe and newly-appointed CFO Jean Hu told eager listeners about where the business has been and where they intend to go during the conference.

In the cloud, bandwidth is king, and QLogic revealed earlier this year big plans for converged networking and FCoE. Alongside converged networking, this seems to be a real workhorse for maintaining market share for the company as they move into the rest of 2011. Converged and 10GbE product revenue has been up 20% sequentially, including both adapters and ASICs. This is not unexpected now that they ended last year strong in spite of slipping revenue.

The earnings call reports that QLogic silicon products are doing extremely well. “Revenue from Silicon Products was up 51% sequentially, driven by strength in Fibre Channel, converged and 10 GigE products,” said Biddiscombe. “I’m also very pleased with that we achieved an operating margin of 29.5% during the fourth quarter driven by higher than expected gross margins.”

A fact reported by JP Morgan as “shares of Neutral-rated QLogic are likely to trade sideways following earnings. The company reported better than expected March results, but mainly driven by upside from its lumpy silicon business. The June outlook came in slightly below expectations, but the gross margin guidance is sturdy. There are limited catalysts in the near term, but JP Morgan expects the ongoing industry shift to the midrange in the data center to benefit QLogic.” Economically, sideways trading often happens after a bear market trend stabilizes.

Juniper Networks, another company resting in the cloud market, also recently held their own earnings call, who themselves faced a downturn but also exceeded expectations. Biddiscombe mentioned product cooperation between the two corporations involving the QFabric for Ethernet and iSCSI and FCoE based solutions. A move that ties back into QLogic’s offerings involving fiber channel IO convergence capabilities for data centers.

Right now, the cloud is primarily a 1gb world today; however, QLogic and others have slowly been pushing 10GbE switching technology over time as anything they do within that sphere will be an expansion opportunity.