Chris Lyon FCIA, Executive Director clyon@fibrechannel.org 425.317.9594

Diane Hughes Engenio Information Technologies diane.hughes@engenio.com 425.282.5153

SAN FRANCISCO - April 4, 2005 , -- The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) announced today that it will host a demonstration of 4Gb/s Fibre Channel (4GFC) technology at Storage Networking World (SNW), which will be held April 12-15, 2005 at the JW Marriott Desert Resort in Phoenix, Arizona. More than 2,700 end users and vendors from the storage industry will attend the conference.

With this activity, the FCIA provides a forum for demonstrating interoperability between different manufacturers' 4GFC products. The goal of the demonstration is to show compatibility which will allow the market to smoothly transition to 4GFC technology.

"The FCIA is a catalyst in providing testing and demonstrations to show customers that the technology is ready," said Werner Glinka, Chairman of FCIA. "The FCIA helps to ensure that investments are protected by testing backwards compatibility. The industry is poised to go through a transition from 2GFC technology to 4GFC and now we are at a point where the technology will be available from multiple vendors, tested at plugfests and shown at demonstrations like the Storage Networking World event."

The FCIA and the University of New Hampshire's InterOperability Laboratory (UNH-IOL) will host the second 4GFC plugfest the week of May 23, 2005. Previous plugfest participants have included manufacturers of host adapters, switches, loop switches, Fibre Channel components, routers/bridges, drive decoders, disk drives, disk array controllers and routers. Contact the FCIA for more information.

"Agilent Technologies has pioneered a line of 4GFC controllers that are enabling the 4GFC storage networking market," said Erik Ottem, director of marketing for the Input/Output Solutions Division in Agilent's Semiconductor Products Group. "Our components continue to deliver the industry's highest performance, reliability, manageability and stability of Fibre Channel networks as demonstrated by the many 4GFC storage products being exhibited at Storage Networking World"

"Aristos Logic's purpose-built 4GFC RAID Storage Processors are helping drive the commoditization of RAID functionality" said Adam Zagorski, Director of Product Marketing for Aristos Logic. "Demonstrating interoperability with these premier vendors keeps Aristos Logic on track to deliver its next generation UltraSlice AL3400 RAID Storage Processor to OEMS worldwide while the proven system level compatibility is advancing the industry transition to 4GFC" added Zagorski.

"It's exciting to see the Fibre Channel vendor community deliver fully interoperable building blocks that enable 4GFC SANs," said Sherri Robinson, director of markets at ATTO Technology, Inc. "As the first vendor to ship 4GFC host adapters, ATTO continues to ensure multi-vendor interoperability for customers transitioning to 4GFC. At the FCIA booth, ATTO is showcasing the Celerity FC-44ES, a quad channel storage adapter that leverages two next generation storage technologies -- PCI Express and 4GFC, along with the Celerity FC-42XS, a dual channel Fibre Channel storage adapter which features ATTO's exclusive Advanced Data Streaming(TM) technology for more efficient data transfers."

"4GFC technology is in full swing at Emulex and available across the entire spectrum of our HBA, embedded switch and I/O controller offerings, reflecting our belief that 4GFC represents a significant value proposition for end-users," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing of Emulex Corporation. "We see no inhibitors associated with the industry's migration to 4GFC speed and we believe that, based on the OEM activity we are seeing, the 4GFC adoption cycle is proceeding smoothly and at an accelerated pace when compared to earlier speed changes."

"After two years of development 4GFC technology is here, it's real and it's available for customers," said Steve Gardner, director of product marketing, Engenio. "Engenio is proud to be the first vendor shipping enterprise storage systems using 4GFC technology, enabling enterprise customers to increase performance and simplify their SAN infrastructure. Adoption is a real win-win for customers because 4GFC technology is fully backwards compatible with existing 1GFC and 2GFC infrastructures and greatly reduces total cost of ownership."

"Finisar is proud to participate in the FCIA's latest 4GFC technology demonstration at Storage Networking World (SNW)," said Kevin Cornell, Sr. Vice President, General Manager Network Tools Division, Finisar." As the Market Leader in Fibre Channel Test and Measurement according to Analyst Firm Frost and Sullivan, Finisar continues to deliver industry-leading analysis and testing products to designers and builders of Fibre Channel SANs."

"It is clear that the storage industry will be rapidly evolving toward 4GFC," said Joel Hagberg, vice president, marketing and business development, Fujitsu Computer Product of America. "The speed benefits associated with systems running at 4GFC are dramatic and have a profound impact on performance in enterprise storage environments. Fujitsu is excited to be an industry front-runner that is helping drive market adoption"

"4GFC will provide the ultimate in system performance and reliability for storage area networking and other enterprise applications," said Doug Pickford, Director, Product Strategy and Planning, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. "Hitachi demonstrated 4GFC interoperability at numerous industry events last year and is on track to deliver Ultrastar drives with the new interface standard in 2005."

"As users can see at this year's Spring SNW, 4GFC technology has arrived," said Harry Mason, director of industry marketing, LSI Logic. "The FCIA has brought together leading vendors with first to market 4GFC technology to demonstrate the performance and backward compatibility benefits of 4GFC. The cooperation amongst the 4GFC product suppliers is indicative of the industry's effort to ensure end-users have superior interoperability and can count on a smooth technology transition. LSI Logic is pleased to work with the FCIA for this week's demonstration to assure users that our 4GFC HBAs are tested and proven solutions."

"McDATA is pleased to demonstrate its 4GFC technology at Storage Networking World's FCIA interoperability lab. The transition from 1 to 2 and now 4GFC speed has been the inevitable path of progression that McDATA has been preparing for - to meet customer's changing technology needs, when they need it- with the best products available," said Bob Williamsen, McDATA senior director of strategic marketing and FCIA board member. "The Fibre Channel Industry Association and the Storage Networking Industry Association are exemplary organizations that promote real solutions for end-user customers through technology innovation and interoperability by bringing the vendor community together, and SNW is the perfect venue to showcase these solutions to our customers."

"Following the success of the FCIA 4GFC plugfest last month, the SNW demo will allow customers to see first-hand that vendors' 4GFC products are interoperable and backward-compatible," said Frank Berry, vice president, QLogic Corp. "Businesses can deploy next-generation performance products now from companies like QLogic that are geared to fit seamlessly into their existing SAN and deliver advanced fabric functionality."

"Data rate growth in the enterprise has fueled the need for increasingly faster and more scalable systems while at the same time emphasizing cost-effectiveness," said Jeff Loebbaka, Seagate vice president of global marketing. "There is strong momentum toward 4GFC solutions and Seagate is aggressively working with the rest of the industry to ultimately create the solutions that will best serve the needs of IT professionals."

'Xyratex has participated since the initial 4GFC interoperability demonstrations and will continue to work with the FCIA and other participating vendors in establishing a set of modular building blocks that our OEM customers will feel confident in implementing into their own solutions. Interoperability is a key factor in developing 4GFC products', said Steve Thompson, CTO Chief Technical Officer, Xyratex.

About the Fibre Channel Industry Association

The Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) is a nonprofit international organization of manufacturers, systems integrators, developers, systems vendors, industry professionals and end users. With 80 member companies and FCIA affiliates in the United States and Japan, FCIA is committed to delivering a broad base of Fibre Channel infrastructure to support a wide array of industry applications within the mass storage and IT-based arenas. FCIA working groups focus on specific aspects of the technology, targeting both vertical and horizontal markets including storage, video, networking and SAN management. For more information on FCIA, please visit our web site: www.fibrechannel.org, contact us:info@fibrechannel.org or call 1-415-561-6270.

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