McDATA Strengthens EMC Partnership at EMC World.

BROOMFIELD, Colo. -- The spotlight will be on McDATA Corporation (Nasdaq: MCDTA)(Nasdaq: MCDT) this week at EMC World in Boston, where it will announce the addition of EMC's Rainfinity Global File Virtualization to the ROC (Remote Office Consolidation). McDATA will leverage EMC's annual technology venue to demonstrate the ROC offering and showcase a broad range of solutions designed to help EMC customers consolidate, optimize and protect the data in their storage networks.

McDATA's ROC is a set of products and services that let companies consolidate, centrally manage and protect all remote office data types, without slowing the pace of real-time global business. Adding Rainfinity's centralized file virtualization and management to the ROC supports customers with even greater data protection and management efficiencies.

McDATA (booth #709) will demonstrate its ROC solution, showing remote file access over a simulated SAN between Boston and Los Angeles. Remote office employees on the Los Angeles side of the network will have read/write functionality across the WAN without impacting application performance or latency. McDATA will also demonstrate its Application Services Module, Intrepid(R) 10000 (i10K) Director, and Eclipse(TM) SAN Router products at its booth, highlighting the strengths McDATA's products bring in support of EMC information lifecycle management (ILM) solutions.

McDATA's four product demonstrations (all at booth #709) at the conference include:

--ROC Solution with Rainfinity: The demo will show how Rainfinity works in conjunction with the ROC portfolio, specifically the McDATA WDS Accelerator, to enable file level migrations and storage consolidation across NAS environments.

--Application Services Module: Available in 2H06, the ASM is a flexible platform that protects previous infrastructure investments by delivering the advantages of virtualization onto existing networks. The module can virtualize an entire fabric, delivering the fastest application speeds in the industry

--Intrepid(R) 10000 Director Partitioning: The i10K has unparalleled availability, performance and scalability and allows customers to seamlessly configure "hard" partitions to securely consolidate and optimize storage networks for faster performance and easier management.

--EMC Connectrix MP-1620M SAN Extension: McDATA routers, offered through EMC, will connect two CLARiiON storage arrays across a WAN with EMC's MirrorView replication software. The SAN extension solution enables truly global storage networks by connecting remote Fibre Channel SANs over any distance using the iFCP protocol, while providing fault isolation and optimization of the IP links.

Also at the conference, McDATA Director of Enterprise Technology Services Chris Carter will present "Distance Solutions to Ensure Business Continuity in EMC SANs." The presentation is scheduled for 5:00 p.m., EDT, Monday, April 24, 2006, with an encore presentation at 3:45 p.m. EDT, Wednesday, April 26, 2006.

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

This press release contains statements about expected future events that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. Readers are urged to consider statements that include the terms "believes," "belief," "expects," "plans," "objectives," "estimates," "anticipates," "intends," "targets," or the like to be uncertain and forward-looking. Factors that could cause actual results to differ and vary materially from expectations include, but are not limited to, McDATA's relationships with EMC, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems and the level of their orders, aggressive price competition by numerous other SAN and IP switch suppliers, OEM qualification of our new products, integration of CNT's sales and marketing functions, manufacturing constraints, constraints in obtaining third party product for resale and other risk factors that are disclosed in McDATA's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These cautionary statements by McDATA should not be construed as exhaustive or as any admission regarding the adequacy of disclosures made by McDATA. All cautionary statements should be read as being applicable to all forward-looking statements wherever they appear. McDATA does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.