McDATA Gains Market Share across All Fibre Channel Switch Categories

Business Wire, Sept 12, 2005

BROOMFIELD, Colo. -- McDATA Corporation (Nasdaq:MCDTA) (Nasdaq:MCDT), a leading provider of storage networking solutions, today announced that in calendar Q205 the company gained market share in all Fibre Channel SAN switching categories reported by Dell'Oro. McDATA's total fibre channel market share grew to 32 percent, while other major competitors saw overall market share declines in the same period.

McDATA continues to have the largest percentage of market share for director-level switch products, holding 44 percent share -- a gain of more than two points in market share over the previous quarter. McDATA's Sphereon(TM) fabric switch products also achieved market share growth during the calendar quarter.

McDATA's overall rise in share is attributed to the increased customer adoption of Intrepid(R) Directors. Growth also was fueled by post-acquisition cross-selling and additional revenue following the CNT acquisition.

"McDATA's continued market share gains indicate increased customer trust in our storage networking expertise," said Wayne Morris, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, McDATA. "We expect customers to continue to rely on McDATA's leading solutions for both mainframe and open systems environments."

Market share calculations for McDATA are based on McDATA's fiscal Q205 actual reported results, adjusted for a calendar quarter. Competitive data was derived from Dell'Oro Group's Quarterly SAN report for calendar Q2 published August 22, 2005.

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 -- such as the Intrepid 10000 Director, 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.