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McDATA, ADVA OPTICAL NETWORKING ANNOUNCE ALLIANCE PARTNERSHIP

McDATA Corporation, an expert provider of multi-capable storage networking solutions, and ADVA Optical Networking, a leading global provider of optical networking solutions, announced that McDATA's Intrepida Directors and Sphereonä Fabric Switches successfully completed testing with ADVA's Fiber Service Platform (FSP) systems. The live testing of numerous storage applications, including Fibre Channel and FICON, was completed at McDATA's Systems Integration Lab in Broomfield, Colo., as part of the company's OPENready Interoperability Partner Program.

Joint deployment of ADVA FSP systems and McDATA's multi-capable switching solutions address multi-site business continuity, disaster recovery, remote storage access, and similar storage applications in metro areas for mediumand large-size enterprises. Growing awareness of the benefits of distributed storage connectivity has resulted in an increasing number of comprehensive storage solutions amongst enterprises. Deployment of these multi-vendor storage solutions mandates closer alliance partnerships between leading vendors and the formation of more strategic partner programs, such as McDATA's OPENready Solutions Partner program and ADVA's ADVAntage Qualification Program.

"By partnering with ADVA, McDATA's industry-leading storage networking solutions can be extended over long distances in a low cost, easy to implement manner," said Mark Stratton, director of solutions marketing at McDATA. "McDATA's 21 years of experience in the world's largest data centers combined with ADVA's position as a leading provider of optical networking solutions brings an unrivalled ability to keep companies connected to their business-critical information."

"Storage connectivity is one of the most important applications for enterprise and carrier networks today," noted Brian P. McCann, ADVA's chief marketing & strategy officer. "Metro optical networking solutions enable native 1 and 2Gb per second Fibre Channel services with full bandwidth throughput for the same price of a T3/E3 service, making storage-over-optical extremely flexible and cost-effective for enterprises of any size. We are pleased to be partnering with one of the industry's leading switch vendors, McDATA, to expand the market opportunity for remote storage applications."

McDATA's OPENready Solutions Partner program was developed specifically to address significant market demand for joint solutions from McDATA and key interoperability partners, requiring a robust test plan executed in McDATA's industry-leading Systems Integration Lab. Solution Partner testing goes beyond basic connectivity by emulating, as closely as possible, real world environments that can benefit from storage networking technology. Additionally, more detailed testing involves a higher level of fault injection and data integrity checking to ensure the industry's most robust, highest performing solutions.

ADVA's FSP product portfolio supports Ethernet, storage and wavelength solutions for customer premise, metro access, metro core and regional networks. Targeted toward both enterprises and carriers, the parallel use of Coarse/Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (C/DWDM) and Time Division Multiplexing technology enables all protocols between 8Mb per second and 10Gb per second and up to 512 applications to be transported over one single fiber pair. The FSP system design supports point-to-point, linear add/drop, ring, and meshed network topologies with up to ten nodes across distances up to 500 kilometers without regeneration.

About McData

McDATA is the 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.