EMLX news.....Emulex Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters Selected by IBM to Provide FICON Connectivity
Emulex's Unique Product Architecture to Transport FICON Protocol Over Fibre Channel for the New IBM eServer z900
COSTA MESA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 6, 2001-- Emulex Corp. (Nasdaq:EMLX - news), the world's leading supplier of Fibre Channel host adapters (HBAs), announced today its LightPulse® LP7000E host bus adapters has been selected to provide FICON connectivity for the new IBM eServer(a) z900 enterprise servers.
FICON technology, an interconnect technology that maps the ESCON protocol over industry-standard fibre channel, has been adopted by IBM as part of its initiative to harness the company's best technologies and practices to support the infrastructure for the next phase of e-business.
FICON provides customers with significantly improved I/O capacity by efficiently combining a new high performance architecture with the faster physical link rates provided by fibre channel, enabling the consolidation of servers to speed e-business transactions.
IBM's new e-business infrastructure consists of high-speed networks, seamlessly integrated applications and powerful servers engineered for specific types of workloads, and utilizing FICON connectivity for e-business infrastructures ensures end users receive the most reliable and high performance mission-critical data and transaction servers in the industry.
``Our eServers z900s were built with the volatile demands of e-business in mind and FICON connectivity provides e-business customers with enhanced storage networking capabilities and even higher performance,'' said Michael Desens, director IBM eServer zSeries Hardware.
``Emulex host bus adapters will provide customers with more choices in leveraging industry-standard fibre channel hardware -- offering a unique combination of scalability, robustness and long distance capability that our FICON customers demand.''
Emulex's Fibre Channel host bus adapters are unique in their ability to support multiple protocols, including FICON. Additionally, Emulex's HBAs feature sophisticated buffered-data architecture, enabling it to maintain full link bandwidth over the extended distance supported by the FICON specification.
The FICON/ESCON market is expected to account for 25 percent of the worldwide storage systems revenue in 2001, according to International Data Corp. (IDC). This market segment, today dominated by ESCON, is expected to shift rapidly to FICON due to the superior performance and capabilities of this new interconnect technology.
``The large ESCON market and the anticipated growth of FICON shipments in this segment, represents a significant opportunity for Emulex, and is further evidence of the flexibility and broad industry acceptance of fibre channel technology for storage networking,'' stated Mike Smith, executive vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Emulex.
``IBM's selection of Emulex as the exclusive supplier of FICON-capable fibre channel host bus adapters reflects our position as a technology leader.''
Emulex LightPulse Host Bus Adapters
Emulex's LightPulse family of HBAs provide a unique combination of features required for mission-critical enterprise applications, including full fabric support, high data integrity, full-duplex operation, data buffering for up to 100km of cabling, and support for all fibre channel topologies.
The company's host bus adapters are also supported by a rich suite of software for storage protocol (SCSI), network protocol (IP), as well as multi-protocol (SCSI & IP) operation, enabling advanced SAN and network applications. Emulex provides a wide range of operating system support, including Windows NT and 2000, Solaris, AIX, Linux, HP-UX, and NetWare.
The Emulex Fibre Channel family includes the 2 Gb/s LP9002 family of host bus adapters, SBus-based LP8000S host adapter, LP8000 host adapter and LP850 host bus adapters, the high-performance PCI-based LP7000E and the industry's first digital re-timing hub, the LH5000 series. For more information about Emulex's Fibre Channel products, visit emulex.com.
About Emulex
Emulex is a leading supplier and developer of storage and server networking host bus adapters based on both fibre channel and IP networking technologies. Storage networks provide data centers with high-speed, scalable, and highly available storage access. Server networks enable the creation of high-performance server clusters for database and transaction processing.
Emulex's LightPulse and Giganet® product families are based on internally developed ASIC, firmware and software technologies, and offer customers high performance, scalability, flexibility and reduced total cost of ownership. The company's products have been selected by the world's leading server and storage providers, including Compaq, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu-Siemens, Groupe Bull, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance and Unisys. In addition, Emulex includes industry leaders Brocade, INRANGE, Intel, Legato, McDATA, Microsoft, and Veritas among its strategic partners. |
