The SilkWorm 4100 Family Delivers High Performance and 'Ports-on-Demand' Scalability To Hitachi Storage Users
SAN JOSE, Calif.-November 16, 2004-Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade) (Nasdaq: BRCD), the world's leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), and Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd (NYSE: HIT), today announced that the Brocade SilkWorm 4100 family of 4 Gigabit per second (Gbit/sec) SAN switches, with ports-on-demand scalability, will be available through the Hitachi Data Systems portfolio of storage networking solutions from December 14th.
Certified for operation with the Hitachi Thunder 9500™ V Series, the Lightning 9900™ V Series, and the newly introduced Hitachi TagmaStore™ Universal Storage Platform, the SilkWorm 4100 SAN switches provide faster data transfer rate than competitive switches, plus full backward compatibility with the world's largest installed base of SANs.
"Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade understand the value that integrated pools of storage bring to customers," said Scott Genereux, senior vice president of global marketing and global channels, Hitachi Data Systems. "We are pleased to offer the new midrange SAN switch from Brocade. This switch complements our product lines and our solution offerings to address customers' needs, ranging from the SMB market to the largest enterprises."
The SilkWorm 4100 is an ideal solution for branch offices and departments in enterprises implementing a local or core-to-edge SAN architecture, and as a core for mid-sized organizations implementing smaller SANs. Available in configurations of 16, 24 and 32 Fibre Channel ports, it features redundant and hot-swappable power supplies and cooling fans, hot swappable SFP media, hot code loading and activation, and extensive enterprise-level security, fabric management, and ease-of-use features. Each of the up to 32-ports is auto-sensing for data link speeds of 1, 2 or 4 Gbit/sec, offering full forward and backward compatibility with the thousands of jointly installed Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade SANs in place today.
"We're very pleased to see Hitachi Data Systems bring the SilkWorm 4100 to market," said Tom Buiocchi, vice president of marketing at Brocade. "This extends our five-year relationship in delivering best of class storage to enterprise customers. Data center managers and storage administrators know that they get state-of-the-art innovation and unquestionable reliability from the Hitachi Data Systems-Brocade team."
Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers' ROI and minimize their risk. By focusing on the customer's perspective as we apply the best hardware, software, and services from Hitachi and our partners, we uniquely satisfy our customers' business needs.
With 2,900 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct and indirect channels in the public, government and private sectors in over 170 countries and regions. Its customers include more than 50 percent of FORTUNE 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Website at www.hds.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 SAN implementation, reduce the total cost of ownership of data storage environments, and improve network and application efficiency. For more information, visit the Brocade Website at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.
Brocade Contacts:
Media Relations
Leslie Davis
Tel: 408.333.5260
lmdavis@brocade.com
Investor Relations
Shirley Stacy
Tel: 408.333.5752
sstacy@brocade.com
FS Communications
Wendy Lewis
Tel: 650.691.1488
wendy@fscomm.com
Brocade, the Brocade B weave logo, Fabric OS, Secure Fabric OS, and SilkWorm are registered 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.
© 2004, Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. Hitachi Data Systems is registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as a trademark and service mark of Hitachi, Ltd. TagmaStore, Thunder 9500, and Lightning 9900 are trademarks of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. 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.
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