Features - Storage Innovations:

MCDATA AND EMC ANNOUNCE 2GB/S DIRECTORS & SWITCHES

McDATA and EMC announced the availability of the industry's leading 2Gb/s director, McDATA's Intrepid, and its 2Gb/s Sphereon Fabric Switches that will provide EMC customers with leading high availability and scalability solutions.

McDATA Corporation., a worldwide leader in open storage networking solutions, announced today that EMC Corporation is offering McDATA's full family of coreto -edge 2Gb/s storage networking solutions. As a result, EMC will offer to its customers McDATA's Intrepid 6000 Series Director and McDATA's Sphereon 3000 Series Fabric Switches as the Connectrix ED-64M, DS-32M2 and DS-16M2, respectively. McDATA's family of core-to-edge 2Gb/s storage networking products ­ including its Intrepid 6000 Series Directors and its Sphereon 3000 Series 16 and 32 port Fabric Switches ­ are built on its common, Directorclass Extendable Open Network (EON) Architecture.

Managing McDATAs hardware products is EFC Manager (branded by EMC as Connectrix Manager Software) part of McDATA's Epoch Software Architecture. "EMC is laser-focused on delivering highly robust, scalable storage networking solutions to meet the needs of the most demanding customer environments," said Don Swatik, EMC vice president of Global Alliances and Information Sciences. McDATAs family of 2Gb/s storage networking products greatly strengthens our ability to offer customers the industrys most complete and innovative networked information storage solutions.

"Including McDATA's 2Gb/s core-to-edge product line, extends the longstanding partnership McDATA has with EMC, and brings the most advanced SAN products on the market today to EMC's customers," said John Kelley, president and Chief Operating Officer of McDATA. "We also recently finalized our contract with EMC, which includes the terms and conditions for the sale of McDATA's full family of core-to-edge 2Gb/s storage networking solutions."

Based on the terms of this contract, coupled with the cost efficiencies we have designed into our 2Gb/s products, McDATA expects to realize favorable economies in the third quarter and beyond.

The McDATA Intrepid 6000 Series Director is the industry's only 2Gb/s, multiprotocol 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 % uptime); ability to handle both mainframe (FICON) and open systems (Fibre Channel) data traffic, and their support for emerging technologies such as iSCSI, FCIP and InfiniBand. McDATA Directors represented 91% of the worldwide Director market in 2001, according to IDC reports.

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 is the only mid-range switch family in the industry built on Director-class technology, offering optimal scalability, performance, management and availability.

McDATA's Epoch Software Architecture (EpochSA) is a comprehensive and industry-leading storage networking software architecture that is the foundation for McDATA¹s entire software suite. EpochSA is a platform-based solution that enhances the intelligence, design and functionality of the fabric and the storage infrastructure.

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.

Web site: www.mcdata.com.