McDATA and EMC Announce Availability of FICON Management Server For McDATA's Intrepid(TM) 6000 Series FICON Directors
BROOMFIELD, Colo., April 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- McDATA® Corporation (Nasdaq: MCDTA - news, MCDT - news) today announced that EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC - news) will include the McDATA Intrepid(TM) 6000 Series Director with FICON Management Server (also known as Control Unit Port or ``CUP'' support) as part of EMC's Connectrix family of fibre channel directors and switches. As a result, EMC customers deploying mainframe environments can now utilize the FICON Management Server capabilities for in-band management of both FICON and ESCON devices from a single mainframe console. The Intrepid Director complements EMC's existing FICON director solutions, the Connectrix ED64M and Connectrix ED-1032, for customer environments where FICON Management Server support is not a requirement. EMC announced FICON support for these products in September 2001.
``EMC and McDATA have shipped and installed more ESCON ports than all other companies in the world. Now, through FICON technology, EMC will be able to provide this installed base of mainframe customers with the increased performance, connectivity and ease of management that McDATA's Director products offer,'' said Don Swatik, EMC vice president of global alliances and information sciences.
ESCON, the original storage networking technology developed for the mainframe environment in the early 1990s, is installed in the majority of the world's data centers. FICON is the next generation of that storage networking protocol and is based on standard Fibre Channel network components. FICON improves on ESCON through increased performance and easier management, but does so for about one-third the price.
``Mainframe customers need to assess the cost and performance advantages that FICON will bring to their data centers. In most cases, the advantages of FICON over ESCON are readily apparent,'' said Mike Kahn, Chairman of The Clipper Group, Inc., technology acquisition consultants based in Wellesley, MA. ``As the leading provider of mainframe connectivity, McDATA, with its Intrepid 6000 Series FICON Director and FICON Management Server, is well positioned to deliver managed FICON solutions to EMC's Symmetrix customers.''
By migrating their mainframe-connected storage networks from ESCON to FICON, customers can take advantage of the following benefits:
-- Optimized resources - Customers will benefit from FICON's ability to
greatly improve application performance through increased throughput.
This enables customers to perform business transactions in shorter
durations, increasing productivity. FICON also enhances network
performance over long distance connections. Where ESCON performance
significantly decreases over a distance of nine kilometers, FICON
channel performance degradation does not begin to occur until beyond
100 kilometers.
-- Ease of management - Since FICON greatly increases the bandwidth
capacity over ESCON (FICON 100MB/s full duplex, ESCON 17MB/s half
duplex) customers enjoy dramatic simplification of their fabric due to
the transition from multiple ESCON channels onto a single FICON
channel. Also, by reducing the channels leads to fewer connections,
which means fewer cables to monitor. Mainframe customers have a single
point of control and centralized and proactive management capabilities
-- all in the FICON environment.
-- Lower costs/Investment Protection - McDATA's Intrepid 6000 Series FICON
Directors are upgradeable to 10 Gb/s as the customers' data needs
evolve. Additionally, since a single FICON channel consolidates
between 4 and 8 ESCON channels, customers will enjoy the benefits
associated with smaller cabling infrastructures.
``The migration of ESCON to FICON represents a significant business benefit to our customers, and with the expertise gained from eight years of shipping ESCON ports, McDATA is making that migration seamless and very cost-effective,'' said McDATA President and Chief Operating Officer John Kelley. ``McDATA owns the ESCON market: we delivered our first ESCON Director in 1994, and since that time, more than 1 million ESCON ports have been shipped to mainframe customers worldwide. McDATA has the expertise, the superior products, and a strong conduit through EMC to extend its leadership in the FICON space. But what's more important is that our customers will win.'' |
