Azanda Network Devices Expands and Strengthens Team With Appointment of Tom Griffin and Mark Laich; Azanda Adds VP Sales and Director of East Coast Sales.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 18, 2001

Azanda Network Devices, a pioneer in silicon-based optical networking switch solutions for metropolitan area networks, today announced the appointment of Tom Griffin to the position of vice president of sales, and Mark Laich to the position director of Eastern North America and European Sales.

"We are pleased to have such talented and experienced professionals join our team. Their contributions to Azanda will improve our ability to serve and expand our client base," said Steve Dines, CEO and president of Azanda Network Devices. "The combined wealth of experience and expertise between Tom and Mark rounds out the world class team we have built at Azanda."

Prior to joining Azanda, Tom Griffin was vice president of sales and marketing at Bitmicro Networks Inc., where he increased sales by more than 400 percent in less than one year. He was also instrumental in the company's strategic planning process, which resulted in increased time-to-market and several new product introductions. Before joining Bitmicro Networks, Tom served as the vice president of sales at Hi/fn Inc., a producer of semiconductor products for use in WAN applications. At Hi/fn, Tom supervised a team of more than 30 sales representatives and was instrumental at closing design wins and sales at several Tier 1 customers, enabling Hi/fn's IPO. Tom has also held various director level positions at Cartesian Data Inc., Quantum Corp. and Zilog Inc. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

"I am looking forward to working with Azanda's customers as they develop systems around Azanda's innovative OC-192/OC-192c traffic management technology," said Griffin. "My goals are to expand the company's base of customers who are developing core, edge and metro-area systems."

Prior to joining Azanda, Mark Laich was the director of Eastern North American and European sales at Lexra Inc., where he established relationships with key customers and partners and achieved a sales growth of 300 percent in the year 2000. Before joining Lexra, Laich served as the director of Eastern North American and European sales at ZSP Corporation, where he determined the sales strategy for developing key relationships with networking and telecommunication equipment providers. Laich has also held managerial positions at LG Semicon America Inc. and Zilog Inc. He received his Bachelor of Science in Electronic Engineering at Virginia Tech and has taken MBA courses at Boston University.

"I'm excited to be joining a company with such a great reputation for technology-leadership and expertise," said Laich. "I look forward to drawing upon my past sales success and background in communications technology to further extend Azanda's strong customer relationships."

About Azanda Network Devices

Founded in March of 2000, Azanda Network Devices develops and markets silicon ICs for optical networking that perform multi-protocol traffic management, statistics collection and internetworking functions at 10 Gbps and beyond. Azanda addresses the needs of leading communications and networking systems vendors in core, edge and metro networks. Azanda Network Devices is privately owned and is headquartered in Sunnyvale. Additional information can be found at http://www.azanda.com, or by contacting the company at 408/720-3100.