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McDATA AND StorageTek ENHANCE FICON STORAGE ENVIRONMENTS

McDATA Corporation, an expert provider of multi-capable storage networking solutions, and StorageTek, a storage services and solutions expert, have announced that StorageTek has contracted to resell McDATA's Sphereon 3232 FICON fabric switch with in-band FICON management, otherwise known as Control Unit Port (CUP). The move makes StorageTek the first storage vendor to bring the benefits of native FICON to market via a more cost-effective and flexible fabric switch solution.

Together with StorageTek's newly FICON-enabled T9840B tape drive, the tape/fabric switch solution allows enterprises to cost-effectively consolidate their tape network infrastructure. The joint solution takes FICON connectivity to the edge of storage area networks to deliver a substantial performance increase over ESCON channels while offering customers an economical alternative to attaching FICON tape to Director-class ports.

"Working closely with a technology leader like McDATA, StorageTek is taking proactive steps to help our customers reduce their total cost of ownership for their networks," said Jill Kenney, StorageTek executive vice president, Worldwide Marketing and Corporate Strategy. "Companies now have a solution that frees premium director-class switch ports to support other data traffic."

The joint solution answers customer demand for simplified fabric switch solutions for both FICON and open systems environments. The 3232 incorporates technology that is environment agnostic, enabling companies to merge their mainframe and open systems networks for lower network costs and greater operational efficiencies. StorageTek supplies drives for both FICON and FC, in support of both environments.

"Partnering with StorageTek to bring FICON CUP to the edge of the FICON SAN was a natural choice given their leadership in the half-inch tape industry," said Mike Gustafson, McDATA senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. "By coupling the high-performance FICON T9840B tape drive with a McDATA Sphereon 3232 fabric switch, end users get one of the best performing, most flexible, and economical FICON tape drive consolidation solution available."

StorageTek will make McDATA's Sphereon 3232 FICON Fabric Switch available to its customers in Europe, Latin America, North America and Asia/Pacific beginning mid-June.

About McDATA

McDATA is an expert provider of Multi-Capable Storage Networking Solutions -- hardware, software and services -- that enable partners and customers around the world to reduce the total cost of storage management today, and be ready to adapt to the real-time information demands of tomorrow. Entrenched in over 8,000 data centers worldwide, McDATA solutions are at the heart of more than 80 percent of Fortune 100 storage network data centers, powering the latest e-business applications, customer databases, financial traffic and other mission-critical data. Customers leverage McDATA's multi-capable solutions to realize immediate cost savings, reduce their investment risk, ensure the continuity of their operations and adapt to changing business requirements.