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McDATA's Intrepid 6140/Sphereon 4500 Available Through IBM

McDATA Corporation, a leader in open, ultra high-availability storage networking solutions, has announced the availability of two new switches to IBM. Beginning now, IBM can deliver to its customers McDATA's entire core-to-edge family of storage networking solutions, including the recently announced Sphereon 4500 Fabric Switch and the Intrepid 6140 Director.

The Sphereon 4500 and Intrepid 6140 Director surpass all solutions currently available on the market in terms of affordability, scalability and ease of use. Specifically, the Sphereon 4500 Fabric Switch is one of the most flexible and cost-effective fibre channel SAN switches. The Sphereon 4500 is designed from the ground up to address the needs of small to medium enterprises and can be readily expanded to meet future needs, through McDATA's exclusive FlexPort Technology. Similarly, the Intrepid 6140 Director is the industry's only 140 port, 2 Gb/s Director, providing maximum resource utilization without compromising future flexibility and overall ROI.

"The implementation and use of the McDATA's storage infrastructure has been an extremely positive experience for us," stated Mark Swaim, manager of technical services for Brown and Williamson Tobacco. "The flexibility, scalability and long-term cost savings of the McDATA SAN are unparalleled. Along with value, we also wanted the best technology available and McDATA's solutions address all of these issues."

"IBM is pleased to be working with vendors such as McDATA to deliver an entire SAN infrastructure to our customers. With solutions such as the Sphereon 4500 and the Intrepid 6140, we can meet our customers needs for a flexible and cost-effective storage networking solution," stated Roland Hagan, vice president of mid market and midrange products, IBM Storage Systems Group. "We look forward to continuing to work with McDATA and delivering storage solutions to our customers."

Customers are reporting the following benefits from the implementation of McDATA's Sphereon 4500 Fabric Switch and the Intrepid 6140 Director:

• Meeting business continuance goals;
• Maximising ROI;
• Improving resource utilisation;
• Industry-leading flexibility and scalability;
• Simple, fast deployments;
• Unparalleled reliability.

"McDATA's Intrepid 6140 Directors and Sphereon 4500 Fabric Switches will enable our customers to deploy highly available, scalable, flexible and cost-effective storage networks," said Chris Pyle, president of Champion Solutions Group. "McDATA is the obvious choice when a customer requires ultra-high availability in an easy-to-deploy and manage enterprise SAN."

"The introduction of the Sphereon 4500 and the Intrepid 6140 Director demonstrates our customer commitment to provide maximum value in both technology and service," stated John Kelley, CEO and president of McDATA. "We continue to define, enable and accelerate our customers' migration to an intelligent infrastructure."

About McDATA

McDATA is a leader in open, ultra-high availability 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.