Storage Leaders Collaborate to Ease Migration from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 to Microsoft Exchange 2000
BROCADE CONFERENCE 2003, LAS VEGAS, Nev. — April 1, 2003 — Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade®) (Nasdaq: BRCD), the world's leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), and Hitachi Data Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), announced today the availability of a pre-tested, pre-configured networked storage solution designed to reduce email storage and management costs for businesses migrating their email infrastructure from Microsoft Exchange 5.5 email to Microsoft Exchange 2000. Based on the industry-leading Hitachi Freedom Storage™ Thunder 9500™ V Series storage system, Brocade SilkWorm® fabric switches, Emulex HBAs, and delivered worldwide through Hitachi Data Systems authorized resellers, this solution greatly simplifies the purchase, installation, and management of SANs for Microsoft Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 environments.
"With the exponential rise in data resulting from email, our customers are demanding solutions that simplify email migration and management," said Charlie Westling, Vice President of Market Development, Datalink, a Hitachi Data Systems authorized reseller. "With this combined effort from Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade, we can more easily fulfill customer needs in a Microsoft Exchange environment and be confident that we're providing a best-of-breed solution."
The bundled SAN solution targets the challenge of multiple "email islands" — a common phenomenon that arises when businesses expand their corporate email infrastructure incrementally by adding Exchange servers with direct-attached storage. As these stove-piped Exchange environments grow, they generate ever-increasing management costs, diminished storage and overall resource utilization, and lengthier backups and restores.
"Because SANs enable centralized pooling of storage devices, making them available for sharing by servers across the network, the SAN model delivers better utilization by reducing the need to purchase servers for the sake of obtaining storage. In addition, SANs reduce backup and restore times and allow for non-disruptive storage additions, thereby making it easy to accommodate future growth," said Scott Genereux, Vice President, Global Marketing, Business Development, Hitachi Data Systems.
"We continue to work with Hitachi Data Systems to deliver proven, tested solutions that ease implementation, migration, and management for our mutual customers. As companies expand their SAN deployments, they can realize even greater returns on their IT investments by continuing to consolidate their server and storage resources," said Jay Kidd, Brocade Vice President of Product Marketing. "We are working with Hitachi Data Systems to pre-verify and test complete SAN solutions so our customers can simplify implementation, optimization, and management of email and other application environments."
The bundle includes a Thunder 9570V storage system which can scale up to 30TB of raw storage capacity, two Brocade SilkWorm 3800 16-port Enterprise Fabric Switches, four Emulex LightPulse 2Gb/s LP9002L Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), and Brocade and Hitachi Data Systems management tools. It will be available from Hitachi Data Systems and its local resellers who offer Microsoft software, installation, and migration services. Hitachi Data Systems sells and supports the complete line of Brocade SilkWorm fabric switches and software to its customers worldwide.
Hitachi Data Systems is committed to enabling organizations worldwide to exploit the full potential of information. By following and deploying our TrueNorth™ strategy, we provide customers with a broad range of storage solutions to simplify, protect and optimize their information infrastructures. Our offerings include enterprise and modular storage systems and software, professional services, fully complemented by best-of-breed products through industry alliances.
With 2,700 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct sales and resellers in the public, government and private sectors in over 170 countries and regions on six continents. Its customers include more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.hds.com.
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company, with approximately 320,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2001 (ended March 31, 2002) consolidated sales totaled 7,994 billion yen ($60.1 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Web site at http://www.hitachi.com.
Brocade offers the industry's leading intelligent platform for networking storage. The world's leading systems, applications, and storage vendors have selected Brocade to provide a networking foundation for their SAN solutions. The Brocade SilkWorm® family of fabric switches and software is designed to optimize data availability and storage and server resources in the enterprise. Using Brocade solutions, companies can simplify the implementation of storage area networks, reduce the total cost of ownership of data storage environments, and improve network and application efficiency. For more information, visit the Brocade website at http://www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.
Contacts:
Jodi Reinman, Hitachi Data Systems, (408) 970-1050, jodi.reinman@hds.com
Fenella Tigner, Brocade, (408) 333-6843, ftigner@brocade.com
Shirley Stacy, Brocade, (408) 333-5752, sstacy@brocade.com
Emma Wischhusen, Text 100 Public Relations, (650) 566-2281, emmaw@text100.com
Brocade, the B weave logo and SilkWorm are registered trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States or in 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. All products, plans, and dates are subject to change without notice.
TrueNorth is a registered trademark of Hitachi Data Systems.
© Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd.
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