Features - Storage Innovations:

INTERSAN-MCDATA PARTNERSHIP ENABLES PATHLINE INTEROPERABILITY

InterSAN Inc, a pioneer of applications-based storage area management (SAM) software, announced that McDATA Corp has awarded OpenReady Tested status to InterSAN's PATHLINE.

This recognition acknowledges that McDATA has approved the InterSAN PATHLINE software's interoperability with McDATA's industry-leading storage networking solutions and the ability of PATHLINE to automatically discover, configure, and proactively manage McDATA's Sphereon 3000 Series Fabric Switches installed in storage networks worldwide. OpenReady Tested status for McDATA's Intrepid 6000 Series Directors is also being pursued. McDATA customers can now leverage PATHLINE to reduce total cost of ownership through centralized and policybased automated management of storage networks from an application perspective.

With this McDATA partnership, PATHLINE has significantly increased its ability to interoperate with leading SAN components and is now able to support over 90% of the fibre channel switches and directors available today.

InterSAN's PATHLINE software allows enterprises to efficiently manage large, complex storage area networks (SANs) by automating many common labor intensive and error-prone tasks such as inventory management, health monitoring, provisioning of storage to applications, and device configuration. PATHLINE's Management Console uniquely provides unified management of global storage networks from the application, line of business, location, and storage domain perspective.

PATHLINE's support for McDATA open storage networking solutions further expands InterSAN software's interoperability within a storage environment, significantly improving IT efficiency. With the PATHLINE automated storageprovisioning feature, a complex, multistep task performed by an expert is transformed into a simple one-step operation that can be performed by a nonexpert. In addition, PATHLINE enables companies to define and rigorously enforce policy-based best practices, resulting in enhanced storage management efficiencies and improved customer service levels.

As an approved McDATA OpenReady Tested Partner, InterSAN has access to the tools and support necessary to interface PATHLINE with McDATA's SAN solutions and access to McDATA's industry-leading systems integration lab. InterSAN's support of McDATA switch fabrics includes automated discovery, health monitoring, and configuration. These capabilities improve mutual customers' IT productivity and application availability and simplify the management of large, complex networked storage infrastructures by providing centralized and policy-based automated management.

"We are delighted to expand PATHLINE's support to include McDATA-based SAN infrastructures," said Chris Melville, co-founder, president, and CEO of InterSAN. "InterSAN's partnership with McDATA will allow our mutual customers to reduce management costs while providing enhanced application service levels through policy-based management."

About PATHLINE -- Improving IT Efficiency, Scalability, and Service Levels

InterSAN PATHLINE is the first application-based SAM software that aligns the management of storage networks with business policies, processes, and objectives. PATHLINE helps customers efficiently and proactively manage large, multivendor SANs at the application level all the way through the life cycle, from planning, deploying, provisioning, to monitoring. PATHLINE software automates common IT tasks such as provisioning, configuration, monitoring, and discovery of heterogeneous SAN components. The policy-based management approach allows IT organizations to customize automation with their best practices. PATHLINE also provides policy-based differentiated and measured service levels to improve application availability and support right-sizing activities. PATHLINE delivers truly heterogeneous interoperability by supporting the storage industry's most strategic products from virtually all leading vendors.

About InterSAN

InterSAN Inc is the pioneer of applications-based storage area management (SAM) software that enables enterprises to fully exploit the benefits of large heterogeneous storage networks. Based on its unique Virtual Private DataPath(TM) technology, the InterSAN PATHLINE software solution provides improved application availability, data security, and service-level management. By centralizing and automating management of complex storage networking infrastructure, PATHLINE improves operational efficiency and business scalability for large enterprises. PATHLINE has been honored as Network Magazine's storage management 2002 Product of the Year, and InterSAN was named number one on Byte and Switch's Top 10 Privately Held Companies. For more information about InterSAN, call 831-430-0692 or visit the Website at www.intersan.net.