01/06-05   -   Pressmeddelande

Brocade Announces New Products and Capabilities To Address Broad IT Systems Requirements

Company Announces New Tapestry Family of Solutions, OEM Availability of High-Performance SAN Switches, and New Service Offerings to Address IT Complexity, Compliance, and Cost Challenges

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade®) (Nasdaq: BRCD), today launched an innovative family of information technology solutions designed to address the complexity, compliance, and cost challenges faced by enterprise data centers, and announced product and service extensions to its industry-leading portfolio of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs). The broad range of new products and capabilities will be showcased at the upcoming Brocade Conferences, reaching seven cities worldwide beginning June 1 in Santa Clara, California.

In three separate releases, the company announced:
• The new Brocade Tapestry family of application infrastructure solutions, which includes innovative new technologies for rapid, automated provisioning and activation of servers, software, and related application resources, as well as the industry’s highest-performance Wide Area File Services (WAFS) solution.
• OEM availability of two additions to the Brocade SilkWorm® family of SAN infrastructure solutions, extending the company’s leadership with 4 Gigabit per second (4 Gbit/sec) Fibre Channel technology to entry-level and director-class SAN environments.
• New professional service and support offerings designed to assist Brocade partners and customers to ensure best-in-class design, installation, operation, and support of their SAN and data center environments.

“Organizations of all sizes have to deal with ever-increasing demands to simultaneously manage complexity, comply with service delivery and accountability requirements, and drive down costs," said Michael Klayko, Chief Executive Officer of Brocade. “Brocade is expanding its offerings to provide the products, technologies, services, and tools to effectively help customers build and manage systems in their dynamic computing environments."

“Brocade has long been a leader in the SAN infrastructure market,“ said John McArthur, Group Vice President and General Manager at IDC. “With today’s announcements, however, Brocade expands its solution portfolio to address a broader range of requirements in enterprise data centers. Solution portfolios, such as Brocade´s SilkWorm and Tapestry family of products, are key components of dynamic computing environments, leveraging the shared storage infrastructure a SAN.“

Tapestry- New Solutions for IT Lifecycle Management
With the launch of the Tapestry family, Brocade now offers products that optimize and automate the utilization of server, storage, and related application resources. The first two members of the Tapestry family, introduced today (and described in the press release titled Brocade Announces New Family of Breakthrough Solutions) are:
• Brocade Tapestry Application Resource Manager (ARM): A framework and capability for dynamically provisioning and activating application resources – including server hardware, complete operating system images, and storage – while automatically managing the complex inter-relationships among them. The Tapestry ARM solution represents a breakthrough in the time it takes to allocate and reprovision application resources, and is now in early release to Brocade partners and customers.
• Brocade Tapestry Wide Area File Services (WAFS): A high-performance solution that enables organizations to centrally manage file data without compromising speed or security for remote users across a Wide Area Network (WAN). The Brocade Tapestry WAFS offering is the industry’s only wide area file service based on Microsoft’s Windows platform, providing native integration and security for remote offices using Microsoft applications.

Extending Leadership in High-Performance SAN Infrastructure
Brocade also announced the release of new 4 Gbit/sec SAN switch and director platforms to its OEM partners (described in the press release titled Brocade Reinforces Leadership in Storage Networking). The SilkWorm 48000 will complement the highly successful SilkWorm 24000 director and extend the Brocade director family with a high-density, enterprise platform that can support up to 256 ports while providing exceptional investment protection. Brocade also announced OEM availability of the SilkWorm 200E, an 8- to 16-port switch targeted at the entry and departmental SAN market segments. Both products are slated for availability later in the year following normal OEM system qualification processes.

New Services to Ensure Success
Today, Brocade also introduced new professional service and support offerings to help Brocade partners and customers realize the maximum value of their technology investments. The Brocade Professional Services and Support offering (described in the press release titled Brocade Launches Professional Services) is designed to complement and augment the capabilities of Brocade OEM and Channel Partners by providing high-confidence, world-class expertise related to the design, installation, operation and support of shared storage environments.

About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
Brocade delivers the industry’s leading platforms and solutions for intelligently connecting, managing, and optimizing IT resources in shared storage environments. The world’s premier systems, server, and storage providers offer the Brocade SilkWorm family of fabric switches and software as the foundation for SAN solutions in organizations of all sizes. In addition, the Brocade Tapestry family of application infrastructure solutions extends the ability to proactively manage and optimize application and information resources across the enterprise. Using Brocade solutions, organizations are better positioned to reduce cost, manage complexity, and satisfy business compliance requirements through optimized use and management of their application infrastructures. For more information, visit the Brocade Web site at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS
This press release contains forward-looking statements, as defined under federal securities laws. This includes statements regarding the benefits of new products and service and support initiatives, and market leadership. These statements are just predictions and involve risks and uncertainties, such that actual results may differ significantly. These risks include, but are not limited to, changes in demand for the market served by such products and services; the effect of competition, including pricing pressure; our ability to achieve market acceptance of 4 Gbit/sec products, the Tapestry family of solutions, and new professional service and support programs; as well as other risks more fully described in the “Risk Factors" section in Brocade’s quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended January 29, 2005.

Brocade, the Brocade B weave logo, Fabric OS, Secure Fabric OS, and SilkWorm are registered trademarks and Tapestry is a trademark 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.