FCIP has been around for quite a while. The fine engineers of CNT/McData/Brocade/Rhapsody/Vixel (you name them) saw early one that a method was needed to overcome the, back then, distance limitation of around 10KM. This was not due to a limitation in the FC protocol itself but more due to the fact the hardware back in the early 2000’s was not up to scratch to push FC frames over longer distances. Another drawback is that FC by nature is not routable. (Not taking into account the FC-IFR which came later and was developed between 2004 and 2008). That, by definition, makes it difficult to be adopted into existing infrastructures where no native FC extenders or other equipment like DWDM/CWDM was available to bridge the distance between two native FC pieces of equipment.
Contrary to popular belief the FCIP protocol was not developed under the T11 ANSI (now INCITS) umbrella but it was actually the IETF who took on this task. The standard is published under RFC-3821.