JNI and BROCADE Form Strategic Alliance for Storage Area Network
Connectivity
biz.yahoo.com
Thursday July 13, 8:41 am Eastern Time
Company Press Release
Companies Jointly Collaborate to Advance SAN Interoperability Through SANpartners, Fabric
Aware Programs
SAN DIEGO and SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 2000-- JNI® Corporation (Nasdaq:JNIC - news) and Brocade Communications, Inc.
(BROCADE®) (Nasdaq:BRCD - news), the leading supplier of Fibre Channel fabric solutions for Storage Area Networking, announced today a strategic alliance
between the two companies. As part of the BROCADE Fabric Aware(TM) and JNI SANpartners(TM) interoperability programs, BROCADE and JNI will
collaborate on product development, service and support, and marketing and sales initiatives to advance the adoption of open Storage Area Networks (SANs) in
enterprise environments.
BROCADE is the leading provider of Fibre Channel fabric switches and JNI is the fastest growing and host bus adapter (HBA) vendor in the Fibre Channel market.
The companies will work together to provide customers with optimized functionality using the combination of BROCADE SilkWorm® Fibre Channel fabric switches
and JNI FibreStar(TM) HBAs, in order to support the requirements of today's high-performance SAN environments and applications. Development is expected to
include performance enhancement, network management, and auto speed-sensing and negotiation for new-generation Fibre Channel technologies.
``We are pleased to enhance our long-standing relationship with JNI and expand the options for our customers in choosing open, standards-based products for their
storage networking environments,'' said Greg Reyes, president and CEO of BROCADE. ``As the SAN market continues to evolve, the need to interconnect islands
of data in a heterogenenous environment is a crucial SAN requirement. Through our alliance with JNI, BROCADE is furthering its commitment to enable
multi-vendor SANs as the networking foundation for storage.''
``BROCADE has been the model for technical, product and marketing development in the Fibre Channel industry and JNI has made interoperability with
BROCADE switches a top priority,'' said Terry Flanagan, Ph.D., president and CEO of JNI. ``We are forming this strategic alliance to assure our customers
continue to receive best-of-class products that connect in an open, multi-vendor environment.''
JNI and BROCADE have cooperated on a number of initiatives. Most recently BROCADE joined JNI's SANpartners program (announced June 14) and JNI
became a charter member of the BROCADE Fabric Aware program (announced June 27). JNI also recently supported the Fibre Channel industry's adoption of the
BROCADE inter-switch routing protocol (FSPF), which has been agreed to by the NCITS Technical Committee T11 as the standard for interswitch interoperability.
About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
BROCADE (Nasdaq:BRCD - news) is the leading supplier of open Fibre Channel fabric solutions that provide the intelligent backbone for Storage Area Networks
(SANs). The BROCADE SilkWorm® family of Fibre Channel switches and software is designed to optimize data availability in the storage 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 and performance. For more information, visit the BROCADE website at www.brocade.com or contact the company at
info@brocade.com.
About JNI Corporation
JNI Corporation is the fastest-growing Fibre Channel host bus adapter company and the #2 manufacturer of Fibre Channel HBAs (non-captive) in revenue in 1999
according to IDC(1). JNI offers a broad line of HBAs, ASICs and software for storage area networks (SANs). JNI's PCI products operate on Solaris, Windows
2000, Windows NT, Novell, Linux and MacOS systems. JNI's SBus products run on Solaris. Customers include Amdahl, Avid, Chaparral, Compaq
StorageWorks, Consan, EMC, Eurologic, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, LSI Logic, McData, MTI, StorageTek and Sun Microsystems. Company
headquarters are in San Diego, with offices throughout the U.S. and Munich (Munchen), Germany. www.jni.com.
JNI - First in Fibre Channel(TM)
Forward Looking Statements
With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties that could cause
actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks include the rapidly changing technology in the company's markets, the
evolving industry standards and frequent introductions of new products and enhancements; the fact that the Fibre Channel market is at an early stage of development;
the company's reliance on certain contract manufacturers, OEMs, distributors and key customers and the other risks discussed in the company's Annual Report on
Form 10-K and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Note to Editors: BROCADE, SilkWorm, SilkWorm Express, Extended Fabrics, Fabric Aware, Fabric Integrator, Fabric OS, Fabric Watch, Fabric Weaver, and
QuickLoop are trademarks or registered trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems Inc., in the United States and/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.
JNI, JNIC, FibreStar, SANpartners and First in Fibre Channel are trademarks or registered trademarks of JNI Corp.
(1) Fastest-growing overall and #2 non-captive (merchant) host bus adapter company in terms of revenue according to an IDC Bulletin #22058, published April
2000.
Contact:
JNI Corporation
Chris Wildermuth, 858/552-3592 (Media)
cwildermuth@jni.com
or
Brocade Communications
Kelley MacMaster, 408/501-8777 (Media Relations)
kmac@brocade.com
Bill Murphy, 408/487-8089 (Investor Relations)
investor-relations@brocade.com |
