07/06-05   -   Pressmeddelande

Strong SAN Demand Drives Customer Enrolment at Brocade Education and Training Centres in EMEA

Summer Boot Camp to Extend Knowledge and Skills for Managing Brocade SANs

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade®) (Nasdaq: BRCD), a leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), today announced its Education and Training Centres in EMEA have trained over 250 customers since the start of the year, a 40 percent increase over the same period in 2004. Brocade will run a Summer Boot Camp at its EMEA flagship training center in Geneva during July and August this year, aimed at enhancing an IT professional´s skills in implementing, supporting, and managing SAN solutions as well as preparing for future Brocade certification exams.

The robust SAN market has resulted in a growing need for qualified SAN professionals and the Brocade Geneva facility, the company´s EMEA training and education hub, offers Brocade OEMs, partners, and end-users solutions-based courses and certification programmes that are focussed on the optimisation of an organisation´s SAN infrastructure. The state-of-the-art Geneva facility offers participants access to a hands-on laboratory that contains the entire Brocade product family and eight separate SAN islands where participants can test various switch configurations, firmware downloads, and SAN parameters. The Geneva facility also has the capability to connect to Brocade remote SAN labs located in San Jose, California.

Currently, the most popular class is the Brocade 2 Gbit/sec Accelerated Brocade Certified Fabric Professional (BCFP) course, where participants learn to install and configure a SAN using Brocade Fibre Channel switches. This year´s Brocade Summer Boot Camp will include the Brocade 2 Gbit/sec Accelerated BCFP course, enabling participants to hone their skills for the implementation, support, and management of their Brocade fabric switches. The Summer Boot Camp will also prepare them for certification as either a Brocade Certified Fabric Professional or Brocade Certified SAN Manager.

"We recognise the importance of evolving our training portfolio to ensure that our customers reap the full benefits from their Brocade SANs," said Ulrich Plechschmidt, Director Brocade EMEA and Latin America. "We will continue to review OEM, partner, and end user needs and enlist their feedback to augment our education and training offering."

Participants can register today for the Brocade Certification Summer Boot Camp in Geneva by e-mailing Stephanie Candinas at scandina@brocade.com. Further information about Brocade Education Services and the Summer Boot Camp are available at www.brocade.com/education_services/index.jsp. Brocade certification courses are also available in June during Brocade Conference 2005 in Frankfurt, London, and Paris. For more information, visit http://www.brocade-events.com/conference2005/

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

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