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StorageTek ADDS McDATA TO WORLDWIDE STORAGE PORTFOLIO

In a move designed to give businesses access to the most complete array of storage solutions, StorageTek has extended its alliance to cover McDATA's entire family of 'core-to-edge' storage networking solutions.

Storage services and solutions expert StorageTek has teamed with McDATA Corporation, a world leader in open, ultra high availability storage networking solutions, to enable customers to match multi-vendor, multi-protocol and flexible storage networking solutions with their preferred environment. The expansion of McDATA and StorageTek's agreement will broaden StorageTek's SAN offering in Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America to include fully supported, flexible, secure and highly available solutions that enable StorageTek to support customer SAN requirements.

"Our customers tell us that they want the freedom of choice afforded by alliances with leading vendors such as McDATA. It is especially important that vendors work together to help customers make maximum use of existing infrastructure and integrate new additions seamlessly. Customers look to StorageTek for our extensive SAN expertise, and the most complete range of storage infrastructure solutions in the industry," said Pierre Cousin, StorageTek vice president and general manager, Storage Networking. "StorageTek now sells and supports McDATA's core-to-edge family of storage networking products worldwide. This addition supports our Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) framework for seamlessly managing, migrating and storing data in the right place, at the right time, for the right cost."

McDATA's Sphereon switches and Intrepid Director, an intelligent Director platform, surpass all solutions currently available on the market in terms of scalability, availability and ease of use. The Sphereon 4500 is the one of the world's most flexible switches and is designed from the ground up to address the needs of entry level and core-to-edge small to medium enterprises.

"McDATA's core-to-edge solutions are built on a technology platform that provides customers with the solutions they need today and into the future," said Mike Gustafson, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, McDATA. "The combination of McDATA and StorageTek's solutions allows customers to deploy highly scalable and flexible storage networking capabilities for virtually any size of environment where high reliability and uptime are important."

About McDATA

McDATA is a world 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. McDATA and the McDATA logo are registered trademarks of McDATA Corporation.

Contact: Kathleen Sullivan of McDATA Corporation, 720-558-4435, kathleen.sullivan@mcdata.com.