McDATA Completes Acquisition of CNT; Customers Endorse the Combination.

BROOMFIELD, Colo. -- McDATA Corporation (Nasdaq:MCDTA)(Nasdaq:MCDT), a leading provider of storage networking solutions, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Computer Network Technology Corporation, "CNT" (Nasdaq: CMNT), a global expert in storage networking solutions. Founded in 1983, CNT has been one of the world's largest providers of comprehensive storage networking solutions, products and services, with 12 international subsidiaries and clients in more than 30 countries. Businesses worldwide depend on CNT to deliver business continuity solutions that drive efficiency, lower costs and reduce IT risks in the enterprise.

"We have worked with both McDATA and CNT for years in our data centers and disaster recovery implementation," said Rod Williams, manager of hardware facilities for First Data Corporation, a large Midwest credit card processor and billing outsourcer. "To support disaster recovery for our credit card processing across both mainframe and open systems, we installed McDATA's Intrepid(R)-series Directors for FICON Cascading together with CNT's UltraNet(R) Edge 3000's for distance. The solution met our technical and business needs, while saving us substantial costs over other alternatives. The combination of McDATA and CNT lets us leverage a good working partnership with a vendor that delivers the broadest portfolio of storage networking product and services."

"Thousands of customers like First Data Corporation depend on McDATA products and services for their SAN and WAN infrastructure," said John Kelley, chairman, president and CEO of McDATA. "Finalizing the acquisition of CNT is great news for us, our customers and our partners. We are very excited to be able to move forward today as a single company that offers hardware, software, services and solutions to globally connect and centrally manage data infrastructures across storage, metro and wide area environments."

About McDATA (www.mcdata.com)

McDATA (Nasdaq:MCDTA)(Nasdaq:MCDT) is the leading provider of storage networking solutions, helping customers build, globally connect, optimize and centrally manage data infrastructures across SAN, MAN and WAN environments. With nearly 25 years experience developing SAN products, services and solutions, McDATA is the trusted partner in the world's largest data centers, connecting more than two-thirds of all networked data.

Forward-Looking Statements

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