MUMBAI
FEBRUARY 12, 2007

Brocade introduced new capabilities that enable interoperability between Brocade blade server SAN switches and products from other SAN switch and director manufacturers. The new feature, known as Brocade Access Gateway, is the first solution that fulfills Brocade's commitment to deliver interoperability between Brocade switches and the large installed base of McDATA SANs. Brocade Access Gateway will be available on Brocade bladed SAN switches from HP, IBM, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens; these new capabilities add further value to blade server environments by improving SAN management and reducing ownership costs. "As firms increasingly turn to bladed systems, Brocade continues to provide innovations that ease connectivity of bladed servers to network storage," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade VP of Worldwide Marketing. "Our new Access Gateway capabilities will allow companies to deploy bladed server solutions with unprecedented simplicity, scalability, and interoperability." The new capabilities from Brocade utilize N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) technology, which has been standardized by the industry's T11 Technical Committee as a methodology to virtualize multiple SAN devices for greater interoperability and scalability. Brocade's implementation is the first to utilize the technology to enhance bladed SAN switch environments. Previously, bladed server installations required carefully matched SAN connectivity devices from the server chassis to the storage network in order to avoid SAN interoperability and manageability complications. Brocade's new solution allows organizations to connect Brocade bladed servers to any vendors' SAN fabric that supports NPIV with the confidence that devices will operate seamlessly and with full performance and functionality. The new bladed SAN switches also deliver breakthroughs in the scalability and management of enterprise SANs. The use of NPIV technology contributes to lower operational costs by allowing server and storage administrators to manage larger and more consolidated SANs with fewer switch domain counts, thereby improving overall SAN management productivity.

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