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McData Signs On for 4-Gig SANs: Page 2 of 3

Brocade -- which is today the No. 1 provider of Fibre Channel SAN switches -- has said publicly that it would support 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel if market demand materialized for the technology. Privately, however, Brocade has been said to oppose it as an unnecessary step that will slow down the move to 10 Gig.

Jay Kidd, VP of product management at Brocade, says the company has not announced any 4-Gbit/s FC product plans. But he adds: "We will coordinate a public announcement in a more cooperative way with our OEMs... We're not worried about McData having an advantage here."

Meanwhile, host bus adapter vendor Emulex Corp. (NYSE: ELX) -- whose primary competitor is QLogic -- has unequivocally opposed the move to 4-Gig SANs. But that could change after Emulex's planned acquisition of Vixel Corp. (Nasdaq: VIXL), a developer of embedded FC switches that has been a proponent of 4-Gbit/s Fibre Channel (see Emulex Drops Cash for Vixel).

In any event, it appears the move to 4-Gbit/s SANs won't impede the development of 10-Gig FC. In fact, McData said today that it plans to deliver 10-Gbit/s support for its Intrepid directors in mid-2004; the company expects customers will use 10-Gig Fibre Channel for interswitch links (ISLs). It says it will demonstrate the technology next week at the Storage Networking World tradeshow in Orlando, Fla. (see McData to Demo 10-Gbit/s FC).

Also at SNW, McData plans to show off its storage network security solution based on the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS)'s proposed FC-SP specification.