McDATA Improves Business Efficiencies for World's Largest Steel Producer

Business Wire, June 5, 2006

SEOUL, Korea -- Worldwide steel producer Pohang Iron & Steel Co (POSCO) has simplified management and eased the cost of its Enterprise Resource Planning, Enterprise Portal, Data Warehouse and other critical business applications thanks to a an enterprise-wide storage standardization projected build on McDATA Corporation (Nasdaq: MCDTA)(Nasdaq: MCDT) solutions.

The improvement project transformed POSCO's archaic storage model to an improved McDATA-standardized networking that incorporate McDATA's Intrepid(R) 10000 Director and consolidated POSCO's Bundang, Kwangyang, and Pohang data centers for easier storage management and greater efficiencies while allowing POSCO to build a backup and recovery solution that leverages the three locations.

POSCO had been separately managing its storage for each division, and due to new business requirements around data access and recoverability, a vendor audit was performed to determine the most efficient solution. Through its careful review process, POSCO concluded that standardizing on a McDATA-based solution would be effective in terms of improved management and greater cost-efficiencies. POSCO chose a solution that incorporated IBM Korea's DS8000, McDATA's Intrepid(R) 10000 Director (i10K), Eclipse SAN router, Intrepid 6140, and SANavigator management software.

"In our past experiences, we've been extremely satisfied with McDATA's stability, quality and service," said Seok-Won Yoon, Information Technology Team Leader at POSCO. "This sentiment was echoed by several storage vendors who participated in the project and proposed McDATA solutions for SAN portion. By using the i10K, the overall architecture was simplified, the data center became more spacious and the management cost was reduced remarkably."

McDATA's Intrepid(R) 10000 Director enables companies to implement cost-efficient tiered infrastructures, simplify network complexity (reducing management costs and port waste) while ensuring the segregation, and thus security, of each fabric's data. And it helps the enterprise comply with stringent data protection requirements. It is the only product available today that offers the functionality required to serve as the backbone of the enterprise data center.

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.

About POSCO (www.posco.co.kr)

Pohang Iron & Steel Co. (POSCO) is the world's largest and most admired steel producer with annual crude-steel production capacity of 28 million tons and sales (FY2000) well in excess of US$9 billion. Employing over 20,000 people, the company makes hot- and cold-rolled steel products (plate steel, stainless steel, hot strip, and wire rods), which it sells to the auto and shipbuilding industries globally.

Forward-Looking Statements

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