Brocade Increases Enterprise Data Center Efficiencies with Latest SAN and FAN Enhancements

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Brocade(R) (NASDAQ: BRCD) , the leader in networked storage solutions that help enterprises connect and manage their information, today announced a wide range of new product and service enhancements that enable greater efficiencies in enterprise data centers and branch offices. The new capabilities address customer challenges in the areas of performance, data protection, and virtualization, and span the company's Storage Area Network (SAN), File Area Network (FAN), and Professional Services offerings.

"Brocade continues to demonstrate its dedication to rapid innovation and to delivering technologies and solutions that offer new levels of efficiencies for data management," said Brad O'Neill, Senior Analyst with Taneja Group. "As the next-generation data center evolves, Brocade is addressing the needs for scalable and high-performance connectivity, simple yet comprehensive management, and absolute investment protection. The company continues to prove that it understands the customer and that it is on the right track to deliver the right solutions for its customer base."

"Today's announcements represent another step forward and proof point that Brocade is executing on its product roadmap and next-generation data center fabric strategy," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. "As enterprise data continues to grow, customers are asking for innovations to drive higher efficiencies, and our announcements today all contribute to that goal."

NEW BROCADE SAN SOLUTIONS FOR THE DATA CENTER

The newest Brocade SAN offerings enhance data center management, security, scalability, distance connectivity, virtualization, and interoperability. Specifically, the announcements today include:

   -- The addition of 10 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel connectivity to the Brocade
      48000 Director. The new Brocade FC10-6 director blade provides the
      capability to interconnect systems between remote sites for high-
      performance business continuity and disaster recovery applications.

   -- A number of enhancements to Brocade Enterprise Fabric Connectivity
      Manager (EFCM) and Brocade Fabric Manager, two enterprise-class
      software applications that help customers increase efficiency in
      managing and securing their SAN infrastructure. Key enhancements
      include Advanced Call Home for Brocade EFCM and performance monitoring
      functionality for Brocade Fabric Manager.

   -- Fast Write acceleration capabilities available on both the Brocade
      48000 router blade (the Brocade FR4-18i) and the Brocade 7500 routing
      platform.  Fast Write boosts enterprise data protection by improving
      performance for many remote disaster recovery applications, such as
      disk mirroring, by up to 200 percent.

   -- Brocade Access Gateway, a virtualization technology that enables
      interoperability between classic Brocade switches and legacy McDATA
      switches, will now be available on the entry-level Brocade 200E
      Switch. Brocade Access Gateway reduces the number of devices to manage
      in the SAN, enabling customers to scale their SAN with servers or
      storage devices without adding management complexity.

   -- The next-generation Brocade application platforms, the Brocade FA4-18
      application blade for the Brocade 48000 and the Brocade 7600
      Application Platform, to provide industry-leading performance and
      enterprise-class scalability to storage virtualization and data
      protection applications.

"EMC is pleased to continue delivering support of our information infrastructure solutions with Brocade's new fabric-based SAN solutions. The combined solutions provide customers with the needed platform to greatly improve storage flexibility around non-disruptive data mobility, data protection and recovery for their resource-intensive data centers," said Barbara Robidoux, Vice President, Storage Platforms Product Marketing, EMC.

NEW AND ENHANCED FAN SOLUTIONS FOR THE ENTERPRISE

Along with enhancements to its SAN portfolio, Brocade has improved the ability for customers to efficiently manage their unstructured (file-based) data throughout the enterprise. The new capabilities for Brocade FAN solutions include:

-- Enhanced branch office solutions for file consolidation and data protection, which give customers flexible options for best addressing their branch office file data management challenges in order to improve data protection, efficiency, and resiliency. (See separate press released also announced today http://www.brocade.com/news/2007/5_29_BranchOffice.jsp.) -- A new release of Brocade StorageX(R) (Version 6.0) that provides additional capabilities for seamless migration of files in both CIFS (Windows) and NFS (UNIX) environments throughout the enterprise. The new release provides tighter integration with Windows Server 2003 R2, broadens UNIX platform support, and allows organizations to have more control over data movement during migration and storage load balancing procedures-thereby reducing administrative costs. -- A new release of Brocade File Lifecycle Manager (FLM). Brocade FLM Version 4.0 now helps ensure that users have continuous access to data by enabling administrators to more easily automate file migration and restoration without system downtime. Brocade FLM provides a powerful way to lower overall storage costs by easily creating tiers of storage in NetApp NAS environments, and also helps organizations to better meet their corporate data compliance requirements.

All of the new Brocade SAN and FAN products and solutions announced today have been integrated into the rapidly growing Brocade Services portfolio. Through its worldwide services organization, Brocade can immediately provide consultation, design, and implementation services for these and all other Brocade solutions.

About Brocade

Brocade is the leading provider of networked storage solutions that help organizations connect, share, and manage their information. Organizations that use Brocade products and services are better able to optimize their IT infrastructures and ensure compliant data management. For more information, visit the Brocade Web site at http://www.brocade.com/ or contact the company at info@brocade.com.

Brocade, the Brocade B-wing logo, Fabric OS, File Lifecycle Manager, MyView, Secure Fabric OS, SilkWorm, and StorageX are registered trademarks and the Brocade B-weave symbol and Tapestry are trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. FICON is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of, and are used to identify, products or services of their respective owners.