The new Brocade Data Center Fabric (DCF) enables greater efficiency and
cost savings with minimal disruption and risk

SAN JOSE, Calif. and LAS VEGAS, Oct. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Brocade(R) (Nasdaq: BRCD), the leading provider of data center networking solutions that help enterprises connect and manage their information, today announced the Brocade Data Center Fabric (DCF) architecture, which responds to the urgent needs of businesses to make their data centers more efficient, reliable, and adaptable.

This announcement marks an important step in Brocade's drive to address customer needs in the evolving data center. As the long-time leader in Storage Area Networks (SANs), with a global installed base market share of greater than 80 percent, Brocade has unmatched expertise in helping the world's largest companies manage their most critical data. The company is now applying this expertise, with new technologies, to the broader data center architecture to maximize performance and increase adaptability, reliability, and efficiency -- all without forcing disruptive changes.

"CIOs and data center managers face the imperative to 'do more with less.' The Brocade DCF is designed to address this challenge," said Michael Klayko, Brocade Chief Executive Officer. "Customers have told us they need to cut costs and increase speed and flexibility, while also managing growing volumes of data. With Brocade DCF we are providing them with a framework to achieve these goals, while also leveraging their existing IT and operational resources and minimizing disruption."

The Brocade DCF architecture simplifies data center connectivity and reduces costs by combining storage networking and server-to-server clustering into a single, converged data center infrastructure. In addition, it adapts to the dynamics of virtualized servers and storage, while accommodating expanding application workloads and the relentless growth of corporate data.

At its annual end-user conference beginning in Las Vegas yesterday, Brocade also previewed a roadmap of new products and technologies that will help to deliver the benefits of this new architecture strategy. Over the next six months, Brocade plans to broaden its innovation and leadership by delivering a wide range of new solutions, technologies, and partnerships that support the Brocade DCF.

Cerner Corporation is the leading U.S. supplier of healthcare information technology solutions that optimize clinical and financial outcomes for the company's 1500 clients. "With data and the expectations around how to better manage continued growth, we're pleased to see the approach Brocade is taking with its DCF architecture in support of our future data center expansion requirements," said Tony Linville, Director, Infrastructure Services, Cerner Corporation. "The ability to add on advanced capabilities as our needs require, without making forklift upgrades, allows us to leverage our current investments to further stretch the bottom line."

"With DCF, Brocade aims to be adaptable to the changing needs of its data center customers," said John Webster, Principal IT Advisor, Illuminata, Inc. "Brocade's solution also encompasses its business partners, who already have significant positions in the data center."

Key Features and Advantages of the Brocade DCF

The new Brocade DCF architecture enables data center customers to optimize performance and better manage cost and risk. It provides several tangible and significant advantages compared to alternative approaches:

• The Brocade DCF is an application-driven architecture. It adapts and responds to the changing needs for managing applications and data. Moreover, it provides a secure, reliable, and high-performance infrastructure to help ensure that mission-critical applications receive the resources they need in order to access and protect critical data.
• The Brocade DCF utilizes the distributed intelligence of the data center. It leverages existing data center application, server, network, and storage elements to maximize functionality, flexibility, and choice for customers. Competing approaches typically advocate the migration or focus of intelligence to a single data center tier or element, often to the detriment of customer choice and flexibility.
• The Brocade DCF is a policy-based architecture. It helps ensure that important data center services -- such as data security, encryption, backup, and replication -- are automatically available based on company business policies, and that they do not encumber the infrastructure when not in use.
• The Brocade DCF simplifies and optimizes important new technologies such as server virtualization. Server virtualization can dramatically increase data center efficiency but also can create new complexities. The vast majority of virtual servers connect to networked storage, and Brocade is using its deep storage networking experience to optimize and automate these connections, helping customers to simplify their environments and operations.
• The Brocade DCF provides customers with investment protection. DCF enables customers to leverage their existing IT resources -- including servers, storage, and SANs -- seamlessly incorporating them into the evolving, larger data center fabric. Brocade's framework maximizes cost savings, while minimizing disruption, risk, and incompatibilities.
• The Brocade DCF gives the customer unparalleled choices. Brocade is working with industry-leading storage, server, and systems partners to ensure maximum compatibility and choice for customers within the Brocade DCF architectural framework. Customers can enjoy a best-in-class approach to servers, storage, protocols, virtualization techniques, and management tools.

New Products and Technologies to Deliver the Benefits of the Brocade DCF

Brocade also described a wide range of new products and technologies that it plans to introduce over the next six months to support and implement the Brocade DCF architecture:

• The Brocade 48000, the industry's highest-performance SAN director, announced on October 15, has been upgraded with significant performance and interoperability enhancements, including 8 Gbit/sec Fibre Channel speed, that offer greater investment protection. The Brocade 48000 is now interoperable with existing McDATA directors and can be added to existing McDATA SANs.
• Brocade also previewed a new category of data center switching solutions, called the Brocade DCX(TM) Backbone, to meet growing requirements for large-scale server virtualization, wider resource-intensive service delivery, adaptive networking, and multiple high-performance network protocols, including Fibre Channel, FCoE, DCE, and iSCSI. The Brocade DCX Backbone will form the core of the Brocade DCF architecture, helping to ensure seamless interoperability across servers, storage, and networking protocols.
• Brocade plans to make the Brocade DCX available to customers in the first half of fiscal 2008. Brocade DCX is complementary to and interoperable with existing Brocade directors -- including the Brocade M6140, Brocade MI10k, and the Brocade 48000 -- to extend the data center fabric.
• Brocade also revealed plans for server connectivity products to link servers to the Brocade DCF with simplified management in virtualized environments. These products reflect the evolution of Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) to provide higher performance and security in next-generation Intelligent Server Adapters (ISAs).
• Brocade said that it has formed industry partnerships to address the critical need for security and encryption in the Brocade DCF. Brocade plans to provide more details about these partnerships in the upcoming months.
• Brocade outlined plans to deliver future enhancements to its industry-leading File Area Network (FAN) solutions, with more automated, policy-based enterprise solutions for managing files in the first half of 2008.
• Finally, Brocade plans to introduce advanced management software to support more comprehensive, simplified management tools for the data center fabric.

For more information on the Brocade DCF architecture, visit http://www.brocade.com/dcf.

About Brocade

Brocade is the leader in data center solutions that enable companies to connect, manage, and profit from their most vital data. 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-weave logo, Fabric OS, File Lifecycle Manager, MyView, SilkWorm, and StorageX are registered trademarks and the Brocade B-wing symbol, DCX, SAN Health, 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.

SOURCE Brocade - 10/23/2007

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