Brocade and McDATA Sign Product Agreement.SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 21, 1997--Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and McDATA Corp. Monday announced an agreement under which McDATA will purchase Fibre Channel switch In a computer storage field, a Fibre Channel switch is a network switch compatible with Fibre Channel (FC) protocol. It allows the creation of a Fibre Channel fabric, that is currently the core component of most storage area networks. products from Brocade. McDATA plans to integrate the Brocade products into its line of high-availability Fibre Channel switches Major manufacturers of Fibre Channel switches are: Brocade, Cisco, McData and Qlogic.
Under the agreement, McDATA will purchase Brocade's 16-port gigabit-per-second Fibre Channel switch, the SilkWorm, for integration with McDATA's high-availability switch subsystems. The two product strategies are very complementary. Customer needs will drive product and vendor choice. "This relationship with McDATA is one of our most significant to date, and we see it as an excellent endorsement of our Fibre Channel expertise and our industry leadership in the definition of switching standards in ANSI (American National Standards Institute, New York, www.ansi.org) A membership organization founded in 1918 that coordinates the development of U.S. voluntary national standards in both the private and public sectors. It is the U.S. member body to ISO and IEC. ," said Bruce Bergman, president and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Brocade. "McDATA is already an industry leader in high-availability ESCON (Enterprise Systems CONnection) An IBM S/390 fiber-optic channel that transfers 17 Mbytes/sec over distances up to 60 km depending on connection type. ESCON allows peripheral devices to be located across large campuses and metropolitan areas. switching. By integrating Brocade products, McDATA can shorten its time-to-market for world-class, high-availability Fibre Channel switching subsystems for the enterprise." "McDATA and Brocade are collaborating to ensure that the infrastructure and interoperability are in place to support Fibre Channel switching and Fibre Channel fabrics as the technology achieves market acceptance," stated Jack McDonnell, president and CEO of McDATA. "Our engineers have worked together over the past year to integrate Brocade's switches into McDATA products." Brocade's Fibre Channel switch, the SilkWorm, is designed for general purpose, open system environments in server-storage network applications. It supports up to 16 ports and was designed to build scalable and resilient Fibre Channel fabrics -- the intelligent infrastructure required to create a scalable network. The switch can sustain a one-gigabit-per-second full-duplex transfer rate from each port, providing 16 gigabits per second end-to-end throughput with 32 gigabits bandwidth internally. McDATA's Fibre Channel switches, like the company's Enterprise System Connection (ESCON) switches, address the reliability, availability and serviceability Reliability, Availability and Serviceability is a computer hardware engineering term. It originated from IBM to advertise the robustness of their mainframe computers. The concept is often known by the acronym RAS. (RAS (1) See network access server. (2) (Remote Access Service) A Windows NT/2000 Server feature that allows remote users access to the network from their Windows laptops or desktops via modem. See RRAS and network access server. ) requirements of enterprise environments, providing automatic fail-over and redundant components. Brocade and McDATA are driving interoperability as part of a Special Working Interest Group in the Fibre Channel Association (FCA FCA Abbreviation for the Free Carrier ), an industry coalition formed to promote Fibre Channel technology, applications and market adoption. Both companies will demonstrate their Fibre Channel switch products at Networld+Interop, Oct. 8-10, 1997, in Atlanta. About McDATA Corp. McDATA Corp. is the leading manufacturer of ESCON switches -- high-availability switches that provide dynamic connections between mainframes and peripherals in large ESCON data centers. With headquarters in Broomfield, Colo., McDATA has 200 employees. In fiscal year 1996, McDATA realized revenues of approximately $180 million. McDATA is a wholly owned subsidiary Wholly Owned Subsidiary A subsidiary whose parent company owns 100% of its common stock. Notes: In other words, the parent company owns the company outright and there are no minority owners. of Massachusetts-based EMC (1) (EMC Corporation, Hopkinton, MA, www.emc.com) The leading supplier of storage products for midrange computers and mainframes. Founded in 1979 by Richard J. Egan and Roger Marino, EMC has developed advanced storage and retrieval technologies for the world's largest companies. Corp. (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :EMC), the world's leading supplier of intelligent enterprise storage and retrieval technology. EMC posted fiscal year 1996 revenues of $2.27 billion and employs 4,800 people worldwide. Information about McDATA and its products can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.mcdata.com or contact Larry Shane at 303/460-4252. About Brocade Communications Systems Brocade, Inc. NASDAQ: BRCD, based in Silicon Valley, designs, manufactures, and sells storage networking solutions and management applications for storage area networks (SANs) and file area networks (FANs). Inc. Brocade's primary focus is to help customers build gigabit Fibre Channel fabrics, enabling them to optimize connections between data storage and enterprise servers, and to design high-performance, scalable data center backbones. Brocade has headquarters at 1901 Guadalupe Parkway, San Jose, Calif. 95131. For more information about Brocade, check out the company's Web site at http://www.brocadecomm.com, or contact Brenda Christensen, vice president, marketing at 408/487-8123 or via e-mail at info@brocadecomm.com. -0- NOTE: SilkWorm is a trademark of Brocade Communications Inc. McDATA is a registered trademark of McDATA Corp. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the properties of their respective owners. McDATA is a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC Corp. CONTACT: McDATA Corp. Linda Hardman, 303/460-4442 lhardman@mcdata.com or Miller/Shandwick Technologies Mary Carlisle/Staci Nathanson, 310/203-0550 mcarlisle@miller.shandwick.com snathanson@miller.shandwick.com |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion