Amdahl Delivers the GSS 4900, the Industry's Most Advanced Storage System for the Most Advanced Applications.

Business Editors

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 31, 2000

- Highest performance

- Greatest scalability

- Integrated SAN benefits

Amdahl Corporation today announced the GSS 4900(TM) modular storage system with capacity, performance, and functionality significantly ahead of its storage competitors. Systems are immediately available.

Known as the "Giga-Screamer," the GSS 4900 has the power to run the most demanding data-warehousing and media-streaming applications in the industry. The GSS 4900, configured with as many as four storage arrays, can handle up to 240,000 I/Os per second or achieve data rates well over a gigabyte per second. In addition, the enormous range of configurations allows customers to start small and grow their capacity, performance, and connectivity to huge levels. For example, a capacity of 100 gigabytes can be expanded to a massive 64 terabytes--over 500 times growth.

The innovative design of the GSS 4900 includes its own integrated SAN (Storage Area Network) allowing connectivity to many open systems servers and enabling advanced storage management solutions. Up to 48 100-megabyte-per-second Fibre Channel ports can be configured. The integrated SAN gives customers immediate access to the benefits of a SAN--improved performance, non-disruptive growth, a centralized storage pool, centralized management, and LANless and serverless backups--without the challenges of designing, installing, and integrating their own SAN.

The GSS 4900 is the first storage offering to integrate storage management software within the storage system. Advanced Function Engines can carry out centralized backups to directly attached tape drives. This offloads the customer's application servers and networks, and avoids contention on the LAN and SAN.

Richard McCormack, vice president of Storage Marketing at Amdahl, explains: "Many customers are taking advantage of Fibre Channel technology rather slowly because of the costs and manpower required to carry out the design and the interoperability testing. We wanted to do the integration for them, so they can just install and go. Customers get all the benefits of a SAN without the complexity."

The GSS 4900 integrates industry-leading components from several major partners including servers from Fujitsu, storage arrays from LSI Logic Storage Systems, and I-SAN switches from BROCADE(R) Systems.

"LSI Logic is pleased to deliver the high-performance storage component of Amdahl's GSS 4900 enterprise storage solution," said Mitch Seigle, director of Marketing, LSI Logic Storage Systems. "Through robust interoperability testing, Amdahl is able to offer their customers world-class products in a single, powerful SAN solution."

"BROCADE is pleased to provide the networking foundation for Amdahl's new SAN solution," said Jack Cuthbert, BROCADE vice president, Worldwide Marketing. "Our contribution to the Amdahl GSS 4900 reiterates the technological superiority of the BROCADE SilkWorm(R) family of Fibre Channel fabric switches and underscores the BROCADE commitment to delivering full interoperability and flexibility in multi-vendor SAN environments."

John McArthur of International Data Corporation says: "Amdahl's I-SAN approach to integrating a Storage Area Network into the GSS 4900 modular storage system can go a long way toward reducing the complexity of implementation thus greatly reducing the time required to realize benefits."

Ted Mariner of Veritas DGC, one of the early GSS 4900 users says: "The Giga-Screamer certainly has huge performance. We have observed between 50- and 100-percent increase in available bandwidth for our standard configuration. This directly translates into a significant improvement in price/performance and throughput of our core data processing systems."

"Storage challenges are overwhelming these days as business systems continue to expand to include customers, suppliers, financial agents, and others," said Ali Jenab, president, Amdahl Technology Division. "We offer the GSS 4900 to help customers cut through the challenges that come with these kinds of significant changes."

About GSS 4900: http://www.amdahl.com/doc/products/storage/gss4900/

About Amdahl Corporation: http://www.amdahl.com/about/abtamh.htm

Amdahl is a registered trademark and GSS 4900 is a trademark of Amdahl Corporation. Fujitsu is a registered trademark of Fujitsu Limited. BROCADE and SilkWorm are registered trademarks of Brocade Communications, Incorporated, in the United States and/or in other countries. All other trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.

The information in this document may be superseded by subsequent documents. For details regarding delivery of specific products, features, and services, contact your local Amdahl representative.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Amdahl news releases are available on the Internet at http://www.amdahl.com/, the Amdahl Corporation home page. The Amdahl site provides current, in-depth information on Amdahl offerings and solutions for enterprise computing.