BLADE Network Technologies Teams Up With Bell Micro to Address Rising Demand for 10 Gigabit Ethernet Data Center Networking

Market Wire, January, 2009

Bell Microproducts Inc ., one of the world's largest value-added distributors of storage and computing technology, and BLADE Network Technologies, Inc . (BLADE), the trusted leader in data center networking, announced today an agreement that enables Bell Microproducts to distribute BLADE's Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) RackSwitch product family throughout Europe.

Bell Micro will sell and co-market BLADE's "Virtual, Cooler and Easier" RackSwitch product family to address the rapidly emerging market for 10GbE data center networking. According to Dell'Oro Group, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is expected to reach 15.1 million ports and represent one quarter of all switch market revenue in 2012 ("Five-Year Ethernet Forecast, July 2008").

"BLADE Network Technologies is a major networking provider for Bell Micro in Europe, especially for adding strength and depth to our growing 10GbE portfolio of products," said Tom Ellis, Business Unit Manager for Storage Solutions at Bell Microproducts. "We see 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology as a key growth area for our business in 2009 as a technology that will remove the bottlenecks we are now seeing in today's data center and SAN environments."

Ellis continued, "As more servers are going into blade environments with multi-core CPUs, we are seeing server throughput outstrip the networks they are attached to with the result that Gigabit Ethernet no longer has enough bandwidth. Add to this the move to converged networks using emerging technologies, such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet, and the 10GbE message is clear and very strong. We welcome BLADE's shared commitment to customer satisfaction and trusted relationships in delivering easy-to-use, high-performance yet low-cost solutions.

"BLADE and Bell Micro are partnering to market 10GbE solutions, such as iSCSI SANs equipped with 10GbE for scalable storage performance, single-wire networks that converge SAN, NAS and application servers on a unified 10GbE infrastructure and10GbE environments tuned for Video on Demand (VoD) and IPTV broadcast environments, as well as 10GbE networking in hosted data center environments and 10GbE for High Performance Computing (HPC). The two companies will also pursue opportunities for 10GbE networking for server and storage consolidation and green IT."

"We are very pleased that Bell Microproducts shares BLADE's vision for the data center network," said Charles Ferland, Vice President of EMEA Sales at BLADE Network Technologies. "Bell Micro and BLADE will work together to ensure that customers throughout Europe understand the value of 10 Gigabit Ethernet and how best to harness the Virtual, Cooler and Easier capabilities of our RackSwitch family for demanding data center networks."

BLADE Reaches 5 Million Ports Milestone at UK Customer

A recent BLADE switch installation at Phorm put BLADE's total shipments past the 5 million ports milestone. A technology company specialising in highly targeted online advertising, Phorm has deployed BLADE's new top-of-rack RackSwitch data center switch for its innovative Open Internet Exchange (OIX), which enables advertisers to connect precisely with their key customers.

"Phorm delivers advertising technology services that are secure, innovative and high performance," said Marc Burgess, Phorm's Senior Vice President of Technology. "We expect the same qualities from our partners. BLADE Network Technologies' RackSwitch offered us the best price performance and the highest level of technical flexibility for our needs. We look forward to working with BLADE as we progress our strategy globally."

About BLADE's Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet RackSwitch Products

BLADE's RackSwitch G8100, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 24 lossless, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) ports, is designed for emerging high-volume 10 GE application environments such as high-performance clusters that require latency of 300 nanoseconds or less, and/or as a 10 GE aggregation switch. BLADE's RackSwitch G8000, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports for uplinks and/or stacking, is designed for rack-level server connectivity, Web 2.0 cloud clusters and/or as a Gigabit aggregation switch.

About BLADE Network Technologies

BLADE Network Technologies is the leading supplier of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet network infrastructure solutions that reside in blade servers and "scale-out" server and storage racks. BLADE's new "virtual, cooler and easier" RackSwitch family demonstrates the promise of "Rackonomics" -- a revolutionary approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership. The company's customers include half of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, and an installed base of over 220,000 network switches representing more than 1,100,000 servers and over 5 million switch ports. For more information, visit www.bladenetwork.net .

About Bell Microproducts Inc.

Bell Microproducts is an international, value-added distributor of a wide range of high-tech products, solutions and services, including storage systems, servers, software, computer components and peripherals, as well as maintenance and professional services. An industry-recognized specialist in storage products, this company is one of the world's largest storage-centric value-added distributors.