13/10-05   -   Pressmeddelande

Brocade delivers industry’s first 4 gigabit per second director with IBM mainframe support

IBM FICON Qualification of the Brocade SilkWorm 48000 Brings
New Levels of Performance Capabilities to IBM Enterprise Customers

SAN JOSE, Calif.—Oct. 12, 2005—Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade®) (Nasdaq: BRCDE), the leading provider of infrastructure for Storage Area Networks (SANs), today announced that the industry’s first 4 Gbit/sec capable SAN director is now qualified for FICON® connectivity at 2Gbit/sec to networked storage in IBM® zSystem 9-109 and eServer™ zSeries® computing environments. Enterprises that rely on IBM mainframe systems for their most critical data and applications can now benefit from the higher performing enterprise SAN solutions for FICON and open system Fibre Channel servers and storage.

The SilkWorm 48000 is a 256-port SAN director that is designed to provide Fibre Channel/FICON intermix, FICON Control Unit Port (CUP), and FICON cascading, with 4 Gbit/sec capabilities for future System z9 servers which helps to provide director investment protection. The advanced custom-chip technology at the heart of the Brocade 4 Gbit/sec family of products is optimized for lower power consumption per port than any other Fibre Channel director available today. As a result, Brocade estimates that the monthly cost of electrical power for the SilkWorm 48000 could be up to 66 percent lower than comparable port density directors that operate at just 2 Gbit/sec.

Using the SilkWorm® 48000 can help eliminate potential bandwidth restrictions with future System z9 mainframe-class systems that offer 4 Gbit/sec channels. For zSeries Linux users, support for N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) from Brocade can help improve resource sharing and simplify storage administration and management. In addition, frame-level trunking has been extended to support up to 32 Gbit/sec of bandwidth in cascaded configurations within the data center and between sites. Exceptional performance and “five-nines" availability and reliability are further safeguarded with Brocade Secure Fabric OS®, which provides stringent change controls and highly robust switch-to-switch authentication for cascaded FICON topologies.

“The outstanding reliability and performance of IBM zSeries servers make these systems critical for many enterprise applications," said Tom Buiocchi, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing and Support at Brocade. “Organizations that are looking to create next-generation solutions to deliver applications and protect vital data now have a complete family of 4Gbit/sec SAN switches to rely upon."

As the leader in bringing the next generation of SAN performance to market, Brocade designed the new SilkWorm 48000 Director and its other 4 Gbit/sec products to be fully compatible with existing Brocade storage network offerings. The new products share a common code base with the full SilkWorm product family, and are designed to ensure “pay-as-you-grow" scalability and support for multiple protocols and transports. Brocade also offers the FICON-qualified SilkWorm 4100 4 Gbit/sec midrange switch, providing customers with a complete range of FICON SAN solutions ranging from 16 to 256 ports.

For more information on the 4 Gbit/sec SAN product line from IBM, refer to the August 3 Brocade news announcement headlined, “IBM to Bring Full Range of Brocade 4 Gbit/Sec SAN Switches and Directors to Marketplace."

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 infor