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BROCADE COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF RHAPSODY NETWORKS

Brocade Communications Systems Inc (Brocade), one of the world's leading providers of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), has announced the completion of the acquisition of Rhapsody Networks, a provider of next-generation intelligent switching platforms. Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Brocade has acquired all outstanding shares of Rhapsody in exchange for 20.5 million shares of Brocade common stock. In addition, Brocade will issue an additional 2.9 million shares of common stock if the Rhapsody business successfully completes specified product development milestones by November 30, 2003. Brocade will record a one-time charge associated with the acquisition in the second quarter of fiscal 2003. With the completion of the acquisition, Brocade intends to deliver, later in the year, the industry's first intelligent Fabric Application Platform. The new offering, the Brocade SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform, will include a new family of intelligent fabric application switches that will be fully interoperable with the existing SilkWorm fabric switch product family. Fabric applications are software applications that are designed to greatly improve the performance, utilization, and scalability of storage networks by virtue of being coded directly into the connecting fabric of the storage network.

By adding a new fabric application switch to an existing Brocade fabric, Brocade customers will gain all the benefits of the fabric applications, while maintaining their investment in Brocade SAN infrastructure. Brocade OEM and application partners will deliver these fabric applications, the first examples of which are expected to be fabric-based volume management, fabric-based data replication, and fabric-based data management.

About Brocade Communications Systems Inc

Brocade offers an industry leading intelligent platform for networking storage. The world's leading systems, applications, and storage vendors have selected Brocade to provide a networking foundation for their SAN solutions. The Brocade SilkWorm family of fabric switches and software is designed to optimize data availability and storage and server resources in the enterprise. Using Brocade solutions, companies can simplify the implementation of storage area networks, reduce the total cost of ownership of data storage environments, and improve network and application efficiency. For more information, visit the Brocade Web site at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.

Contact: Shirley Stacy, 408-392-5752, sstacy@brocade.com.