Storage:

McDATA Asserts Lead in Fibre Channel Director Market

McDATA Corporation, a worldwide leader in open storage networking solutions, announced its continued leadership in the Director-class market, shipping 91 percent of the Fibre Channel Director ports in 2001. Success is demonstrated with strong results in 2001 in both Directors and fabric switches, according to preliminary data by market research firm IDC. Within this preliminary data (which will be finalized shortly in IDC's 2002 Worldwide Fibre Channel Hub and Switch Market Forecast and Analysis, 2000-2006) IDC reported that McDATA remained the leading supplier of Fibre Channel Director revenue and ports in 2001. The data also shows that shipments of Director-class ports grew more than 90 percent in 2001, faster than any other segment of the entire Fibre Channel hub and switch market.

Also shown in IDC's preliminary data, McDATA accounted for more than 7 percent of the loop and fabric switch market segment. This came after having only shipped those products for seven months in 2001.

"Users of Fibre Channel Directors place a high value on efficient connectivity and high availability," said Eric Sheppard, senior research analyst for IDC. "McDATA's long-standing commitment to continual innovation and development of Director-class switches has helped satisfy such end-user demands, and is a key factor in the company's success within the SAN infrastructure market."

Although not represented in the preliminary data, McDATA, through its OEM and reseller agreements, has shipped more than 1.4 million storage-networking ports to customers worldwide. McDATA leads the industry in bringing high availability to more customers by aggressively driving down the price per port of Director-class products.

About McDATA's Intrepid 6000 Series Directors

The McDATA Intrepid 6000 Series Director is the industryıs only 2Gb/s, multi-protocol Director with the ability to support the rigorous demands of enterprise data centers. McDATA Intrepid Directors are deployed in the majority of the world's data centers because of their ultra high availability (99.999 percent uptime); ability to handle both mainframe (FICON) and open systems (Fibre Channel) data traffic; non-disruptive code load and activation capabilities (McDATA's HotCAT Technology); and their support for emerging technologies such as 10Gb/s, iSCSI, FCIP and InfiniBand. The McDATA Intrepid is built on McDATA's common Extendable Open Network (EON) Architecture that ensures unwavering data availability, ease of management and lower overall IT costs. More information on McDATA's Directors can be found at www.mcdata.com/solutions/sanhardware/intrepid/index.html.

About McDATA's Sphereon 3000 Series Fabric Switches

McDATA's Sphereon 3000 Series Fabric Switches are the highest availability products in their class and bring to the mid-range market many attributes of McDATA Directors such as HotCAT Technology (non-disruptive code load and activation) and the highest port density in the industry. The Sphereon 3000 Series product line -- including the only 32-port switch available today -- is the only mid-range switch family in the industry built on Director-class technology, offering optimal scalability, performance, management and availability. More information on McDATA's Sphereon 3000 Series Fabric Switches can be found at
www.mcdata.com/solutions/sanhardware/sphereon/index.html.

About McDATA

McDATA is a worldwide leader in open storage networking solutions and provides highly available, scalable and centrally managed storage area networks (SANs) that address enterprise-wide storage problems. McDATA's core-to-edge enterprise SAN solutions improve the reliability and availability of data to simplify SAN management and reduce the total cost of ownership. McDATA extensively pre-tests its solutions to provide IT organizations with the comprehensive tools, methodologies and support essential to robust SAN implementation. McDATA distributes its products through its OEMs, network of resellers and Elite Solution Partners.

Contact JPR Communications, Joe Austin, 818-386-0403, joea@jprcom.com.