"With the growing acceptance of bladed servers in enterprise environments, many of our customers are requesting that we expand SAN connectivity options for the Intel Server Chassis SBCE to help support seamless integration with their existing SAN fabrics and SAN fabric services such as those provided by Brocade," said Pat Buddenbaum, Modular Products Marketing Manager at Intel. "By working with Brocade to make its switch technology available for Intel Enterprise Blade Servers, we are able to extend the storage networking capability options for our platform and help further simplify the acquisition, integration, and operation of advanced servers for demanding IT environments."
The Intel Enterprise Blade Server consolidates servers, storage, network connectivity, power, and cooling into a single architecture designed to deliver efficient space utilization, high availability, and the flexibility to add resources. Server blades -- which are independent servers with their own processors, memory, operating system, applications, and Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) -- slide into a bay in a single chassis and plug into a high-availability midplane that allows the sharing of power, fans, network switches, and peripheral devices.
The Brocade 16-port SAN switch module enables connectivity between up to 14 server blades in a chassis and two external storage devices. It uses a fourth-generation Brocade chip (ASIC) to support advanced SAN switch capabilities, including Brocade Inter-Switch Link (ISL) Trunking, Advanced Performance Monitoring, Secure Fabric OS(R) and hot code activation.
"The demand for bladed servers is outpacing traditional server growth," said Tom Buiocchi, Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Brocade. "Brocade is well-positioned as a key player in this market segment and we are very pleased to add Intel and its OEM customers to our growing ecosystem."
Brocade enterprise and Brocade entry SAN switch modules for the Intel Enterprise Blade Server are available now. For more information please visit http://www.intel.com/.
About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
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(R) 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 Web site at http://www.brocade.com/ or contact the company at Email Contact.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, as defined under federal securities laws. Theses statements include statements regarding market acceptance of, and demand for, bladed servers and the benefits of the Intel Enterprise Blade Server. 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, shifts in demand for the market served by bladed servers, the effects of competition, as well as other risks more fully described in the "Risk Factors" section in Brocade's quarterly report on Form 10-Q for quarterly period ended January 29, 2005.
NOTE: 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. 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.
CONTACT: media, Leslie Davis, +1-408-333-5260, or
Email Contact,
or investors, Shirley Stacy, +1-408-333-5752, or
Email Contact, both of
Brocade; or Wendy Lewis of FS Communications, +1-650-691-1488, or
Email Contact, for Brocade
Web site: http://www.brocade.com/
Web site: http://www.intel.com/