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EMC TO RESELL CIENA STORAGE EXTENSION PLATFORMS

Ciena Corp announced that EMC Corp will resell Ciena's CN 2000 Storage Extension Platform and ONLINE Metro Multiservice DWDM Platform through the EMC Select Program. The EMC Select Program facilitates enterprise customers' acquisition and deployment of commonly used storage networking components of information lifecycle management (ILM) solutions.

EMC will offer the CN 2000 and ONLINE Metro to customers developing solutions that require the extension of storage area networks, remote disk mirroring, remote back-up or the extension of other applications over distances from tens to thousands of miles to meet business continuance and disaster recovery goals.

"Storage extension platforms are playing an increasingly critical role as customers build comprehensive storage solutions that enable them to back-up their data centers and applications over significant distances to ensure 24x7 operations and regulatory compliance," said Tom Joyce, EMC's senior director of the EMC Select Program. "The addition of the Ciena CN 2000 and ONLINE Metro to the EMC Select Program gives our customers an added convenience and eases their deployment of distance extension technology."

The CN 2000 and ONLINE Metro have undergone rigorous interoperability testing and have been qualified by EMC as E-Lab Tested with EMC Symmetrix and EMC CLARiiON networked storage systems, using EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) in Fibre Channel and ESCON environments, and EMC MirrorView, EMC SAN Copy software and EMC CLARiiON Disk Library in Fibre Channel environments. These devices are also supported in Gigabit Ethernet environments and are now generally available through the EMC Select Program.

"The EMC Select Program dramatically expands our enterprise market opportunity and our exposure to enterprise customers that require storage extension platforms as part of their overall storage solution," said Bill Koss, vice president of global alliances and partners at Ciena. "This relationship underscores the ongoing execution of our strategy as Ciena delivers specialized technology to EMC and its customers to address specific storage extension applications."

Rather than delivering broad generalist offerings across the entire network, Ciena is focusing its technologies on specific applications, including high-value storage extension. Relationships with companies like EMC enable Ciena's best-of-breed technology to address a broader set of customers, and allow Ciena to focus on interoperability, reliability, performance and network economics in its chosen areas of expertise -- maximizing value for Ciena, its resellers and their mutual customers.