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ALISO VIEJO, Calif., June 3, 2003,- QLogic Corp. (Nasdaq:QLGC)
today announced that several companies- including Agilent Technologies Inc., FalconStor
Software, Fujitsu, JNI and Seagate- have joined QLogic in its commitment to develop
10Gb and 4Gb products for SAN customers, following the Fibre Channel Industry
Association's (FCIA) vote to extend 4Gb Fibre Channel from an "inside the
box" storage device interconnect into switched SAN fabrics. For businesses
with growing investments in 1Gb or 2Gb storage networks, 4Gb products from these
vendors will double current Fibre Channel performance at about the same price
as 2Gb Fibre Channel, while maintaining backward-compatibility with existing networks
and storage. 10Gb solutions will deliver five times the bandwidth of current 2Gb
products and will be used in applications that stream large amounts of data across
a fabric such as inter-switch links, voice and video.
"We are pleased that the FCIA has once again helped prevent
industry fragmentation by providing a clear and concise roadmap for Fibre Channel
migration as well as providing invaluable market feedback into the Fibre Channel
standards community of engineering professionals," said Skip Jones, sitting
Chairman of the Fibre Channel Industry Association.
"As the leading provider of fiber-optic transceivers, we
are committed to delivering the solutions our customers require," said Tom
Fawcett, worldwide marketing manager for Agilent's Fiber Optic Products. "We
believe that there will be demand for both 4 Gb/s and 10 Gb/s products and we
intend to meet that demand."
"We commend QLogic for taking a leadership role in the development
of new, high performance products designed to support the growing requirements
of enterprise SAN users," stated Wai Lam, CTO, FalconStor Software, Inc.
"The higher bandwidth delivered by 4Gb fabric will enable our customers to
fully leverage the advanced storage services offered by IPStor, including ultra-fast, windowless backup and rapid data replication and recovery, while also enabling them to better support larger, more demanding storage area networks."
"Fujitsu believes that Fibre Channel will continue to be a dominant interface for storage area networks. Storage industry leaders must stay competitive with Fibre Channel technology by increasing performance while maintaining a reasonable cost structure," said Mike Chenery, vice president, advanced product engineering. "Fujitsu's hard drive roadmap includes next generation drives with 4Gb Fibre Channel interfaces and we are excited to support QLogic's commitment in enabling subsystems manufactures to build a cost-effective, scalable path toward 4Gb/10Gb storage solutions."
"JNI's customers are asking for performance improvements
from their 2Gb Fibre Channel SANs, a seamless migration path to 4Gb and the ability
to deploy 10Gb fabrics for their highest performance applications," said
Phil Brotherton, vice president of Marketing, JNI. "We are committed to meeting
these needs with our next generation of JNI FibreStar HBAs."
"The next-generation of Fibre Channel technology will serve
the growing need for high-bandwidth applications such as real-time transactional
processing to a large number of clients in the enterprise as well as areas such
as high-definition video streaming," said Gordy Lutz, Seagate senior product
marketing manager, and member of the Fibre Channel Industry Assocation (FCIA)
Board of Directors. "Seagate supports both 4Gb and 10Gb technologies at the
fabric level and is working with various companies to ensure interoperability
of future storage solutions."
Customer Requirements for 10/4 High Speed Fibre Channel
IT professionals realize that as each day goes by, the users they're tasked to
support are driving more transactions, digital photographs, voice files and video
files across their networks. It's easy for SAN architects to understand the need
for storage networks with 10Gb of bandwidth and beyond.
SAN architects want a cost-effective, backward-compatible migration
path while 10Gb Fibre Channel is gradually adopted. They're asking for 4Gb storage
systems, fabric switches and HBAs that cost about the same as similar 2Gb products
and that are 100 percent compatible with installed 1Gb and 2Gb products.
The Fibre Channel Industry is Responding
Major manufacturers of Fibre Channel components and systems have been developing
products based on both 10Gb and 4Gb Fibre Channel standards for quite some time.
Storage system, switch and HBA manufacturers are focused on developing systems
with 10Gb Fibre Channel interfaces while disk drive and tape drive manufacturers
are developing next generation drives with 4Gb Fibre Channel interfaces. Responding
to feedback from their customers, companies such as QLogic are extending the availability
of cost-effective 4Gb Fibre Channel products from peripherals, to fabric switches
and HBAs.
Note: All QLogic-issued press releases appear on the company's web site (www.qlogic.com). Any announcement that does not appear on the QLogic web site has not been issued by QLogic.
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