Features - Storage Innovations:

INRANGE ANNOUNCES 2 GBPS FIBRE CHANNEL DIRECTORS THROUGH IBM

INRANGE Technologies, a leading provider of high-end scalable storage networking solutions, has announced that its family of 2 Gigabit per second (Gbps) Directors will be made generally available through IBM Corporation beginning September 13. INRANGE's 2 Gbps family of Directors and switches are designed to support the enterprise demands for reliable, highly available, scalable switching infrastructures while providing the flexibility to support mainframe (FICON) and open systems (Fibre Channel Protocol) traffic simultaneously, and to intermix 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps speeds.

"Today's Storage Area Networks (SANs) are becoming increasingly complex, requiring vendors to provide solutions that support heterogeneous environments and emerging technologies without causing users to crack the SAN every time a change needs to be made," stated Robert Passmore, research director, Gartner. "SAN solutions need to meet customer requirements for scalable, reliable, flexible platforms that support the intermix of 1 and 2 Gbps speeds, and the ability to intermix FICON and open systems traffic. Vendors that enable customers to migrate to new technologies or protocols without forklift upgrades or adding additional complexity will win."

As SANs continue to become an increasingly vital part of a company's IT infrastructure, scalability, security, and the ability to intermix protocols and transport speeds becomes critical. By designing the INRANGE IN-VSN FC/9000 Fibre Channel Director based on INRANGE's Extensible Core Architecture (XCA), customers benefit from high levels of scalability, reliability, and flexibility. XCA also supports investment protection for customers as they migrate from ESCON to FICON, or exploit FICON Cascading as they expand the size of FICON fabrics beyond the limits of a single director.

"Enterprise environments demand products that provide high availability, scalability and investment protection. Our reseller relationship with INRANGE continues to provide customers with greater options to design reliable, highly available enterprise SANs," stated Roland Hagan, vice president, marketing, IBM Storage Products Group division. "INRANGE's 2 Gbps FC/9000 offers customers a redundant, non-blocked switching core on which to expand storage networks, and combines industry-leading scalability of up to 256 ports with the flexibility to support FICON Intermix and FICON Cascading supporting customers' ability to consolidate mainframe and open systems storage networks."

Customers looking to deploy ultrascalable, upgradeable, Fibre Channel/FICON enterprise SAN infrastructures will benefit from:

• Multi-protocol switching support -- supports a mixture of FICON and Fibre Channel switching in the same director
• Ultrascalability from 24 to 256 ports without loss of access to data
• Intermix of 1 Gbps and 2 Gbps user port modules in the same director
• Investment Protection -- In-place expansion and upgrades for 1 Gbps to 2 Gbps, Scalability to simplify asset management
• High-Integrity Fabric -- The FC/9000 supports advanced security features and fabric binding, a necessary component for FICON Cascading.
• High Availability -- Fault-Tolerant, Director-class 99.999% switch design; Non-disruptive code load
• Flexible management options and open API support for third party management software through ClearVSN, part of INRANGE's IN-VSN Advanced Storage Networking Services (ASNS)

Support For High-Integrity San Environments

As SANs continue to grow and expand, customers will require greater security, and the ability to access specific ports or specific switches/Directors without disruption to the network. High-Integrity Fabric, a feature of SecureVSN, which is part of INRANGE's advanced software offerings, provides an important new security feature.

The High-Integrity Fabric has at its core a fabric binding capability that allows only authorized directors to establish interswitch links (ISLs). INRANGE's standards based implementation of Fabric Binding significantly increases the integrity of a multi-director Fibre Channel fabric for both open systems and FICON storage networks and is required for all high-integrity SAN environments. A high integrity fabric is a pre-requisite for FICON Cascading.

"By designing a flexible, intelligent, Director-class switching platform, INRANGE has been able to remove the complexity in storage networking enabling customers to create heterogeneous SANs that can grow and expand as requirements demand," stated Kenneth H. Koch, president and chief executive officer, INRANGE. "With the general availability of INRANGE's FC/9000 2 Gbps switching solutions through IBM, customers can benefit from lowered total cost of ownership, optimized storage resources, simplified management and higher levels of reliability and data availability."

This announcement enhances the INRANGE and IBM reseller relationship by adding 2 Gbps Fiber Channel capabilities to the portfolio of INRANGE products already offered by IBM. The FC/9000 is designed to provide enterprise-class availability and Fibre Channel connectivity for IBM and third party servers and storage products supporting Fibre Channel and FICON. The 64-port and 128-port model of the 2 Gbps FC/9000 will be generally available through IBM on September 13. The 256-port model of the FC/9000 with 2 Gbps support will be made generally available through IBM during the fourth quarter 2002. All models of the INRANGE FC/9000 will support FICON Cascading with availability expected January 31, 2003.

About INRANGE

Inrange Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of SPX Corporation, is the world leader in high-end scalable storage networking solutions and provides users with the building blocks to manage and expand large, complex storage networks simply, without geographic limitations. INRANGE's core-to-edge-to-anywhere solutions solve the growing storage challenges facing today's IT organizations, while providing investment protection and a proven foundation for future growth. INRANGE has a 33-year history of providing mission-critical networking technologies, servicing over 2,200 customers in 90 countries. Visit our Website at www.inrange.com.

Contact: Joe Crivelli, 609-518-4498, or joe.crivelli@inrange.com.