McDATA 10Gb/s Director Blade Simplifies High-Speed Campus and Metro Connectivity

Business Wire, Jan 24, 2006

BROOMFIELD, Colo. -- Intrepid(R) 6000 XPM Blade Provides Cost-Effective SAN Connectivity with Fewer Cabling Requirements

As the demand for disaster recovery solutions and the cost to drive them over distance increases, storage networking customers now have a more efficient, cost-effective way to incorporate and manage disaster recovery requirements in their existing storage environments. McDATA Corporation's (Nasdaq: MCDTA)(Nasdaq:MCDT) new 10Gb/s Intrepid(R) 6000 XPM Blade allows storage administrators to use a single connection to move data up to 100 kilometers to a secondary location, and at speeds that are significantly greater than 2Gb/s solutions on the market.

McDATA's XPM for the 6000 series joins the Intrepid 10000 in offering the industry's only 10Gb/s director connectivity option, and is available now through IBM, Sun Microsystems and McDATA's extensive network of channel and reseller partners. Hitachi Data Systems will offer the XPM to customers following product-testing completion.

Supporting resource consolidation and protecting previous director investments, the XPM provides the highest available bandwidth per port; meeting the growing data performance needs of customers like Major League Baseball.

"Our website requires extreme levels of performance and reliability in order to support the high volume of visitor traffic and the data-intensive video applications we run," said Joe Choti, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Major League Baseball Advanced Media. "We've used McDATA's Intrepid directors in our infrastructure for years. Now, with the easy addition of XPM blades, we are taking our website's performance and data protection to the next level, without losing our original director investment."

The XPM blade increases connectivity speeds, reducing the number of cables needed for inter-switch links (ISLs) and metro/campus connectivity, resulting in lowered management and leased fiber costs. Customers who want to take advantage of the new 10Gb/s speed and distance capabilities can either purchase a McDATA Intrepid director with XPM blades installed, or non-disruptively upgrade their 2Gb/s Intrepid 6064 and 6140 director platforms to 10Gb/s.

McDATA's XPM blade can also be used in conjunction with McDATA's Intrepid 10000 Director, or with any 10Gb/s Fibre Channel compliant devices, to increase bandwidth and conserve fiber resources. When used for long-distance disaster recovery or remote office connectivity, McDATA's 10Gb/s XPM blade offers cost advantages by reducing the need to add campus or metro cabling. By upgrading to 10Gb/s, customers can improve disaster recovery capabilities since applications will be able to retrieve and protect data faster, increasing link efficiency and lowering risk.

"McDATA's 10Gb/s Intrepid XPM is an effective storage networking tool that can be used to provide high speed inter switch links (ISLs) over one fiber which consolidates existing resources, optimizes data center performance and protects existing and future investments," said Doug Ingraham, vice president of product management, McDATA. "As the expert in storage networking, McDATA is the only vendor to offer 10Gb/s-capable solutions that enable high speed connectivity to support customers' modular Global Enterprise Data Infrastructure strategies."

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

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