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Technology Stocks : Son of SAN - Storage Networking Technologies -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J Fieb who wrote (4500)	4/4/2002 12:15:20 AM
From: J Fieb	Respond to of 4808

McData Comes to 2-Gig Dance PALM DESERT, Calif. -- Storage Networking World 2002 -- McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA - message board) says it will ship 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel support across its full line of switches and directors in June 2002 -- well in the wake of Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD - message board), which has been shipping 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel switches since last October. Analysts say McData hasn't managed the transition from 1- to 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel as well as Brocade has (see Brocade Gets Analysts' Thumbs-Up). "They're hugely behind Brocade," says Steve Berg, senior analyst with Punk Ziegel & Co. "I still think McData is the best-positioned vendor in the director space. But they need to compete with Brocade on a daily basis out there -- and lately, they haven't been." Peter Dougherty, McData's VP of business development, says the 2-Gbit/s products are currently in qualification and will be shipping by the end of June. Why has it taken this long? "It was getting the whole product line out at the same time," Dougherty says. "There's a lot of moving parts there, quite frankly." Still, McData doesn't believe there's burning customer demand for 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel. "People today have only 30 to 40 percent utilization of their 1-Gig links," says Dick Search, McData's VP of marketing. Most enterprises plan to roll out 2-Gbit/s gradually and will initially use it for switch-to-switch connectivity, he says. Dougherty adds that 2-Gbit/s Fibre Channel "is about buzz as much as anything else." [Ed. note: Right, and the buzz is that McData is about eight months behind Brocade in this market.] Nevertheless, he concedes it's important to provide customers an upgrade path. Company executives would not divulge expected pricing of the 2-Gbit/s family of switches, but they say there will be a "slight premium" over the 1-Gbit/s models. Brocade is offering its 2-Gbit/s FC switches at about the same cost as its 1-Gbit/s products (see Brocade Cashes 12000 Checks). In addition to its 2-Gbit/s rollout plans, McData announced "open trunking," a software-based feature that will let its switches connect to those of Brocade or Inrange Technologies Corp. (Nasdaq: INRG - message board). The feature is slated to be available in the second half of 2002. McData also is readying SANavigator 3.0, a new version of its SAN management suite, which it expects to release in mid-May. McData bought SANavigator last September (see McData Snaps up SANavigator). New features in 3.0 include heterogeneous zoning of multiple devices, the ability to export to a database, and a policy engine that can automate SAN management tasks. Notably, SANavigator 3.0 is the first version of the software that takes advantage of frame-tracking features in McData's FC switches -- the same technology pertaining to the patent-infringement lawsuit McData has filed against Brocade. McData is demanding that Brocade disable frame tracking in its products, while Brocade has denied it has infringed on the patent (see Reyes Lashes Out at McData, McData Files Injunction, Stock Sinks, McData Fires Lawsuit at Brocade). "The technology has been in our ASICs since 1998, and now we're exposing it to the management tools," says Dougherty. With the new features in SANavigator 3.0, SAN managers can track the movement of frames through the Fibre Channel fabric and execute tasks based on predefined policies. Finally, with its 2-Gbit/s FC launch, McData is naming its product lines instead of just assigning them numbers. The 64-port director switch is now called the Intrepid 6064 and the 16- and 32-port switches will be called Sphereon. "We're going for a nautical theme, bouncing off SANavigator," explains a McData representative. Note to McData: It's probably best to avoid naming your next switch "Titanic." — Todd Spangler, Senior Editor, Byte and Switch