Vixel's Fibre Channel SAN Products Selected for IBM's Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage.

BOTHELL, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 2, 1998--Vixel Corporation, an industry leader in storage networking, announced today that IBM has selected Vixel to provide Fibre Channel hubs and short-wave gigibit transceivers for their Netfinity Fibre Channel Storage solution.

These Vixel storage networking products complement IBM's high-speed, highly scalable enterprise storage solution.

"Today's Intel-based enterprise computing demands flexible and reliable storage that gives users continuous access to all enterprise data, and can scale up with changing business requirements," explains Barry Warwick, business line manager for Netfinity Fibre Channel at IBM. "Adding Vixel's storage networking products to our solution gives Netfinity customers a Fibre Channel offering that is ideal for demanding applications such as OLTP and ERP systems, data warehousing, and business intelligence systems, and is an integral part of server clustering and disaster recovery configurations."

Both IBM and Vixel are poised to meet increasing market demand for open data storage systems -- industry analysts project the open systems storage business to exceed $12.5 billion in revenue by the year 2000. "IBM's Netfinity Fibre Channel solution connected by the Vixel Rapport 1000 and Vixel's shortwave GBIC transceiver provide the basis for storage area network (SAN) solutions that IBM's customers require to run their high performance applications," said Greg Olbright, CEO of Vixel. "This partnership is not only a key relationship for Vixel Corporation but is also a significant step for the acceptance of Fibre Channel technology in the enterprise."

Vixel is providing IBM with its Rapport 1000 Fibre Channel unmanaged hub and its OE1063SW gigabit-per-second fiberoptic transceiver for use in the Netfinity Fibre Channel enterprise storage solution. IBM's Netfinity Fibre Channel storage offering with Vixel components is now shipping.

About Vixel

Vixel designs, develops and markets Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) interconnect solutions to enterprise systems, storage and server manufacturers. Vixel switches, hubs, management software and transceivers provide the connectivity required for implementing end-to-end SANs. Vixel's products enable enterprise-wide data access, maximum system availability, and performance for data and bandwidth intensive applications such as Internet commerce, data warehousing and mining, clustering, backup, digital video editing, and broadcasting. Vixel was founded in 1991. For more information, contact the company at: 11911 North Creek Pkwy. So., Bothell, WA 98011. Phone: [phone]. Fax: [phone]. Email: [e-mail], or visit Vixel's Web site at http://www.vixel.com.