JNI Corporation Announces Eric Wenaas to Remain Chairman of Board; Board of Directors Reelected at Annual Meeting; Other Proxy Items Approved by Shareholders.

Business Editors and High-Tech Writers

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 22, 2002

JNI(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:JNIC), a leading provider of enterprise storage connectivity products, today announced that Eric P. Wenaas, Ph.D. has been elected chairman of the board of directors.

In addition, all five members of the board were re-elected by proxy vote at JNI's annual shareholders meeting, held today.

Dr. Wenaas will continue to serve as chairman of the board of directors for JNI Corporation. Wenaas, 60, had originally planned to retire from the board at the time of the shareholders meeting on May 22, with John C. Stiska succeeding Wenaas as chairman. A news announcement to that effect was released on April 11, 2002 entitled, "JNI Corp Announces Upcoming Change in Board of Directors; Director John Stiska To Succeed Eric Wenaas As Chairman."

However, Stiska was appointed JNI's interim chief executive officer on Monday, May 20 by the board after Neal Waddington, former president and CEO, resigned from the company and withdrew his nomination for the board. Stiska plans to serve in that role until a new CEO can be found. As a result, Wenaas agreed to stay on the board and remain as chairman.

"Eric has agreed to continue to serve to assure the smoothest transition possible when a new CEO is hired," said Stiska. "It was not appropriate for me to serve as both chairman of the board as well as interim CEO. With the sudden and unexpected changes necessitated by Neal Waddington's departure, both Eric and I felt that corporate governance guidelines separating the chairman and CEO responsibilities should be followed and JNI's long-time chairman, Dr. Wenaas, Eric is best suited to be the chairman of the board."

At the annual meeting, five members of JNI's board of directors were reelected to serve one-year terms. The reelected members are John Bolger, Tom St. Dennis, John C. Stiska, Sylvia Summers-Dubrevil and Eric Wenaas. St. Dennis and Summers-Dubrevil were appointed to the board in 2001. Stiska has been a board member since May 2000. Bolger has served on the board since JNI went public in October 1999.

Wenaas became eligible for the board when Waddington withdrew his name as a nominee and declined to serve. The board selected Wenaas to replace Waddington as a board nominee and instructed the proxy holder to cast all of the votes cast for Waddington for Wenaas.

Wenaas was CEO of Jaycor Inc. when the business unit that eventually became JNI Corporation was established in the early 1990s, and authorized the initial funding for the company. He became chairman of the board of directors when JNI was incorporated as a separate entity in February 1997.

In addition to the re-election of the current board members as noted, shareholders approved two other items: the adoption of an increase in the number of shares that may be issued under JNI's 1999 Employee Stock Purchase Plan by 200,000 shares, from 350,000 to 550,000; and ratify the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as JNI's independent auditors for the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2002. The expansion of shares assures enough shares are available for purchase by employees through the company's ESPP program. PricewaterhouseCoopers has served as JNI's independent auditors since 1999. Details of the vote can be found with documents filed by the SEC.

About JNI Corporation

JNI Corporation is one of the leading manufacturers of connectivity products for the enterprise data center. JNI offers a broad line of Fibre Channel HBAs, ASICs and software for storage area networks, as well as HCA Modules for InfiniBand. JNI's PCI, SBus and CompactPCI HBAs operate on Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows NT, HP-UX, AIX, Novell, Linux and Mac OS systems. JNI's high availability HBAs and software are certified in single, multi-host and cluster environments for Windows NT and 2000, and Solaris. JNI customers, distributors and strategic partners include Acal FCS, Bell Microproducts, Brocade, Chaparral, Compaq StorageWorks, Consan, Crossroads, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, InfiniSwitch, Info X, Lane15 Software, Legato, LSI Logic, McDATA, Mellanox Technologies, Nishan Systems, StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, TidalWire, Troika Networks and Veritas. Company headquarters is in San Diego, with offices throughout the U.S. and Europe.

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