Features - Storage Innovations:

McDATA DEMONSTRATES NEXT-GENERATION INTELLIGENT PLATFORM

McDATA Corporation, an expert provider of multi-capable storage networking solutions, announced that it has demonstrated a new intelligent switch platform for storage networking that will reduce costs and improve the performance of storage networks.

The demonstration took place at McDATA's headquarters this week during its annual European media event. McDATA's intelligent switch platform will increase storage utilization efficiency and lower the total cost of ownership for companies' storage environments, when used in conjunction with network resident applications from storage vendors.

McDATA envisions the future of IT environments where a real-time storage services infrastructure provides companies with the power to access data and manage capacity instantly and seamlessly. McDATA's intelligent switch platform will enable this by bringing more value to the SAN fabric, optimizing storage asset utilization through centralized, real-time provisioning of heterogeneous storage.

This technology demonstration illustrates the ease of management and provisioning from a secure, centralized interface and delivers the following features and benefits:

• Intelligent network delivery of storage applications for improved application performance and optimal matching of application needs to available storage resources.
• Significantly reduced storage management costs and improved scalability by centralizing volume management to a single management point in the network;
• Consolidation of storage resources for improved utilization, increased flexibility and improved TCO;
• McDATA plans to bring this platform to market as a cost-effective extension of its Sphereon fabric switch product line and as an upgrade for its award-winning Intrepid director product line.

"In these times of tight budgets, IT managers are looking for solutions that improve the utilization and capabilities of storage assets while reducing the burden of managing those assets," said John McArthur, group vice president of storage research at IDC. "Networked-based solutions like the one demonstrated by McDATA will provide IT managers with an intelligent platform for deploying consistent storage services such as data replication, data migration and volume management across heterogeneous storage systems."

The new intelligent platform is being designed by the same engineering teams that architected McDATA's fabric switches and director class switches. As an extension of McDATA's existing switch architecture, the intelligent platform ensures the highest degree of interoperability with current McDATA fabrics.

"This demonstration is further evidence of McDATA's leadership in consistently driving the innovation of storage networking to bring more functionality to our customers. Bringing intelligence into the storage network will allow companies to enjoy higher and more efficient storage utilization and will lower the overall cost of storage environments," said Mike Gustafson, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for McDATA. "McDATA's teamwork with our OEM and application partners will greatly improve the methods our mutual customers use to access and manage their critical data, and will serve as a key enabler of the evolution to real-time, on-demand information services."

McDATA currently is in discussions with independent software vendors and its storage OEM partners to gain support for its intelligent switch platform.