Cisco Announces Support for Storage Networking Industry Association Technology Center Grand Opening; Cisco to Demo Secured Data Storage Networking over LAN, MAN, and WAN

Business Wire, Feb 2, 2001

Business Editors and High Tech Writers

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 2, 2001

Cisco Systems, Inc. demonstrated its support for the Storage Networking Industry Association's (SNIA) Technology Center Grand Opening today in Colorado Springs. The 14,000 square foot center, the largest independent storage networking complex in the world, will support the SNIA by providing testing laboratories as well as educational and training facilities. The center will also facilitate the gathering of work groups to progress the study, development and recommendation of storage standards to the appropriate standards bodies.

As part of the grand opening, the SNIA Technology Center will showcase solutions from numerous storage and networking vendors through several interoperability demos. Cisco will be an active participant in all phases of these demos, most notably as the primary provider of IP networking infrastructure equipment.

In addition, Cisco will be running its own demo in conjunction with StorageProvider, a storage service provider (SSP) based in Austin, TX, which highlights the wealth of options customers have in deploying storage networking solutions. This demo will feature a network of Cisco 7200 and Cisco 3600 series routers, Catalyst 6500 series switches, Cisco Metro 1500 DWDM, network attached storage filers, and tape libraries, which are deployed across multiple sites including two co-location facilities in Texas and the SNIA Technology Center.

Specifically, the demo will show data moving from primary storage systems located in Colorado to the two remote sites in Texas, simultaneously through virtual private network (VPN) connections established across the Internet. The point of this demo is to show comprehensive and multi-point access to storage data across the LAN, MAN, and WAN, with the primary benefit being secured and redundant data backup, which helps companies ensure their business continuance.

"The Cisco and StorageProvider demo at the SNIA Technology Center is a significant step in showing the interoperable storage networks that customers demand," said Doug Ingraham, manager, product marketing at Cisco. "In the months ahead, Cisco will continue to vigorously support the SNIA Technology Center as a way to promote interoperability between all emerging IP storage networking and traditional SAN technologies."

"The SNIA Technology Center will provide an excellent venue for vendors to come together to address real-world customer issues," said Sheila Childs, VP of Service Development for StorageProvider and co-chair of the SNIA Interoperability Committee. "StorageProvider's work with Cisco to demonstrate the delivery of the Data Storage Utility through traditional and emerging network technologies takes an additional step towards showing viable alternatives in data storage management."

"With today's grand opening of the SNIA Technology Center, the SNIA membership has succeeded in building an environment that will, without a doubt, help to accelerate our mission - the promotion and evolution of storage networking," said Larry Krantz, chairman of the SNIA. "The SNIA education, training and standards developments are ultimately the future of storage networking. We believe that the SNIA Technology Center is a giant step toward supplying vendors, providers and more importantly, customers, with a centralized storage networking resource for years to come."

About The Technology Center

As a laboratory, the Technology Center embodies the SNIA vision by offering this new facility and providing members with the opportunity to profile enterprise storage systems, computing platforms - including Fibre Channel and NAS infrastructures - and products. With its Grand Opening today, the SNIA Technology Center will showcase the development and testing of advanced network storage technologies that require interoperability of multi-vendor storage products.

The SNIA is dedicated to ensuring that storage networks become a completed and trusted solution across the IT community, and fulfills this mission by bringing together vendors and IT staff from the storage industry to define product requirements. For more details on the SNIA Technology Center, visit the SNIA Web site at http://www.snia.org.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available at www.cisco.com.

Cisco, Cisco Systems and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.