Features - Storage Innovations:

EMC TO DEVELOP OPEN STORAGE SOFTWARE FOR BROCADE SilkWorm

Brocade Communications Systems Inc (Brocade), a leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), and EMC Corporation, a leader in storage, announced recently that EMC will develop intelligent infrastructure software for the new Brocade SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform, enabling new levels of data delivery, management, scalability and performance in heterogeneous storage environments.

"As the open storage software industry leader, EMC is focused on driving intelligence throughout the information infrastructure to provide customers with the ability to take advantage of advances in storage technology," said Mark Lewis, EMC executive vice president of New Ventures and Chief Technology Officer. "As part of this effort, EMC is taking advantage of the Silkworm Fabric Application platform to deliver open EMC applications that allow customers to extend the value of their existing automated networked storage environments while introducing new, fabric-based capabilities that simplify and automate those environments."

"Brocade has taken a leadership role in expanding intelligence in the fabric, delivering a common set of advanced fabric services that make it easier for our partners to unlock this intelligence and deliver advanced features to their end customers," said Greg Reyes, Brocade Chairman and CEO. "Our teamwork with EMC will help significantly extend the functionality, simplify the management, and reduce the operational cost and complexity of managing and administering enterprise storage environments."

Announced last month, the SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform is the industry's first open, intelligent platform for fabric-based applications. By adding a new SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform switch to an existing SAN utilizing Brocade technology, customers will be able to further extend storage and data management capabilities with the assurance of compatibility with thousands of existing SANs across the world utilizing Brocade technology.

EMC sells and supports the SilkWorm 3800 16-port, SilkWorm 3900 32-port, and SilkWorm 12000 Core Fabric switch under the EMC Connectrix brand.

About Brocade Communications Systems Inc

Brocade offers one of the industry's leading intelligent platforms for networking storage. World 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.

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services, providing automated networked storage solutions for organizations across the globe. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.

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