McDATA Intrepid 10000 Wins InfoWorld's Best Director Switch Award

Business Wire, Jan 3, 2006

BROOMFIELD, Colo. -- McDATA Corporation's (Nasdaq: MCDTA)(Nasdaq: MCDT) Intrepid(TM) 10000 Director (i10K) has been named "Best Director Switch" as part of InfoWorld's 2006 Technology of the Year Awards.

"InfoWorld's Technology of the Year Awards honor the best, most innovative products we tested during the previous calendar year," said Doug Dineley, executive editor of the InfoWorld Test Center. "McDATA's i10K wowed us with great features such as fabric partitioning and long-distance capabilities. Not only was it the best SAN switch we tested, but the highest scorer among all SAN products."

InfoWorld's annual Technology of the Year Awards recognize the technologies that made the greatest impact during the previous year and the products that best exemplify the implementation of those technologies. McDATA's i10k director was awarded perfect "10's" for performance and scalability, and high scores in management, reliability, interoperability and value.

"In order to win InfoWorld's Best Director Switch award, a product must complete rigorous testing and competitive analysis. This award further validates McDATA's leadership and expertise in delivering the most innovative technologies and enterprise-class director switches," said Doug Ingraham, vice president of product management, McDATA. "InfoWorld has confirmed that McDATA's i10K is the director of choice for organizations deploying enterprise-class storage architectures."

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.