Brocade Touts Foundry Deal

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Nearly 85 percent of networking and storage customers polled said they believe that Brocade's intent to acquire Foundry Networks will result in the company becoming a strong and viable provider of end-to-end networking solutions that would seriously challenge incumbent vendors. TheInfoPro, an industry research firm who taps into “the direct voice of the customer”, independently conducted the Brocade-commissioned survey to better understand customer sentiment regarding the proposed $3 billion acquisition. In general, some 60 percent of those surveyed said that they were either "very favorable" or "favorable" about the deal with less than three percent saying they had negative sentiment to it.

The survey results delivered the strongest validation to-date for the planned acquisition, which Brocade announced on July 21, 2008. In the survey, customers were asked a number of questions about the proposed combination to assess how it might impact the current and future vendor landscape in the networking and data center industries, including questions about which vendor would be best positioned to deliver on the promises of future technologies. On these questions the respondents ranked Brocade -- post the Foundry acquisition – second among all networking vendors as "best suited to be the vendor of choice" for next-generation networking technologies.

Brocade commissioned TheInfoPro to develop the questions and conduct the survey. TheInfoPro polled more than 230 networking and storage professionals across a number of vertical markets with revenues ranging from less than $500 million to more than $40 billion per year. The survey comprised both multiple choice and open-ended questions.

"We are extremely pleased with the survey results because real customers are the best validation point that our acquisition strategy was right on the mark. The data supports the same type of feedback we have gotten from our OEMs and other key industry partners," said Tom Buiocchi, vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Brocade.

Brocade Communications Systems Inc.