Brocade Enhances MS VM

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Brocade(R) (Nasdaq: BRCD), a leader in data center networking solutions that help enterprises connect and manage their information, today announced that it is working with Microsoft to bring greater application mobility and higher levels of reliability to data centers deploying Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007. When used together in a virtual server environment running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, Brocade Access Gateway technology and System Center Virtual Machine Manager optimize and simplify the often complex relationship between server and storage connectivity in the data center.

Key Brocade Storage Area Network (SAN) products support Access Gateway, an N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV)-based technology that enables multiple virtual servers to share and connect over a single physical interface. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager uses these Brocade-enabled SAN connections for easier application mobility, increased availability, and greater system reliability.

"Virtualization is fundamentally changing the data center," said Tom Buiocchi, Brocade Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. "Brocade has partnered with Microsoft to deliver optimized blade server and server virtualization solutions that improve asset utilization in evolving data centers."

"System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 helps customers to assess and consolidate suitable server workloads onto virtual machines, freeing up physical resources for repurposing or hardware retirement," said David Greschler, director of System Center marketing at Microsoft Corp. "We're working with Brocade to simplify server and storage connectivity, and providing customers scalable storage infrastructure for virtualized IT environments. We look forward to partnering with Brocade on other solutions in support of System Center systems management products."

Brocade Communications Systems Inc.