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HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS TO RESELL BROCADE SilkWorm SAN SWITCHES

Brocade Communications Systems Inc and Hitachi Data Systems Corp, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, announced that the Brocade SilkWorm 4100 family of 4 Gigabit per second SAN switches, with ports-on-demand scalability, will be available through the Hitachi Data Systems portfolio of storage networking solutions from Dec. 14.

Certified for operation with the Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series, the Lightning 9900 V Series, and the newly introduced Hitachi TagmaStore Universal Storage Platform, the SilkWorm 4100 SAN switches provide faster data transfer rate than competitive switches, plus full backward compatibility with the world's largest installed base of SANs.

"Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade understand the value that integrated pools of storage bring to customers," said Scott Genereux, senior vice president of global marketing and global channels for Hitachi Data Systems. "We are pleased to offer the new midrange SAN switch from Brocade. This switch complements our product lines and our solution offerings to address customers' needs, ranging from the SMB market to the largest enterprises."

The SilkWorm 4100 is an ideal solution for branch offices and departments in enterprises implementing a local or core-to-edge SAN architecture, and as a core for mid-sized organizations implementing smaller SANs. Available in configurations of 16, 24 and 32 Fibre Channel ports, it features redundant and hot-swappable power supplies and cooling fans, hot swappable SFP media, hot code loading and activation, and extensive enterprise-level security, fabric management, and ease-of-use features. Each of the up to 32-ports is auto-sensing for data link speeds of 1, 2 or 4 Gbps, offering full forward and backward compatibility with the thousands of jointly installed Hitachi Data Systems and Brocade SANs in place today.

"We're very pleased to see Hitachi Data Systems bring the SilkWorm 4100 to market," said Tom Buiocchi, vice president of marketing at Brocade. "This extends our five-year relationship in delivering best of class storage to enterprise customers. Data center managers and storage administrators know that they get state-of-the-art innovation and unquestionable reliability from the Hitachi Data Systems-Brocade team."

About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers' ROI and minimize their risk. By focusing on the customer's perspective as we apply the best hardware, software, and services from Hitachi and our partners, we uniquely satisfy our customers' business needs.

With 2,900 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct and indirect channels in the public, government and private sectors in over 170 countries. Its customers include more than 50 percent of FORTUNE 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.hds.com.