U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray Delivers Outlook for Storage Networking Industry.

Business Editors & Analysts

NOTE TO EDITORS: The following is an investment opinion issued by

U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray 

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 20, 2000

U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray Managing Director and Senior Semiconductor Analyst Ashok Kumar, today delivered insight into the future of the storage-networking sector in an in-depth research report. Kumar believes that while fibre channel has established an early market lead in the storage networking market, its success in the long run against such entrenched networking competitors such as Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and Internet Protocol (IP) is highly questionable.

"We believe the storage networking technology is in the very early stages of its development and represents an enormous market opportunity," said Kumar. "We expect IP storage products, expected to ramp in 2001, to prevail over fibre channel, as they will offer comparable levels of performance and reliability at much lower price points. As practically all network area storage (NAS) products communicate over IP, they are likely to be complementary to IP storage products."

While fibre channel has an early lead in the storage-networking sector, Kumar believes its future is hampered by:

1) lack of skilled fibre channel talent, further precluding the

technology's adoption;

2) stiff competition from the Ethernet/IP industry;

3) schizophrenic implementation as both a shared-media loop

topology and as a switched fabric topology; and

4) confusion within the fibre channel industry, leading to a lack

of common industry vision being communicated.

"Considering the issues with fibre channel and the relative strength of Ethernet/IP, we believe fibre channel appears to be headed for mothballs the same way Fibre Distributed Data Interface (FDDI), Token Ring and many other networking technologies have gone," said Kumar. "In our view, the future of fibre channel companies rests in their ability to migrate their storage area network (SAN) functionality from fibre channel to Ethernet/IP. While Ethernet and IP have not been used for storage traffic, we believe they will make a profound impact on the storage networking industry when introduced."

For more information, please go to www.gotoanalysts.com.

U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, a subsidiary of Minneapolis-based U.S. Bancorp, provides a full range of investment products and services to businesses, institutions and individuals. The company's investment banking business has grown exponentially in the last several years by focusing on the needs of growth companies in the health care, technology, financial institutions, consumer and industrial growth sectors. U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray has a national reputation for its expertise in fundamental research and equity and debt financing. U.S. Bancorp offers a comprehensive range of financial solutions through U.S. Bank, First American Asset Management, U.S. Bancorp Libra Investments and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray. Securities products and services offered through U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray, Inc., member SIPC and NYSE, Inc., a subsidiary of U.S. Bancorp.

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