COSTA MESA, Calif., May 24, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), the market leader in Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) and embedded storage switches, and a leading supplier of intelligent building blocks for next generation storage networking systems, today announced it has now shipped over 2 million ports of InSpeed(tm) switches. During the first quarter of 2004, Emulex's InSpeed port shipments exceeded the combined Fibre Channel Fabric and Chassis switch port shipments of all vendors by more than 25 percent, as estimated by leading industry market research firm The Dell'Oro Group.
Steve Duplessie, president and senior analyst of Enterprise Storage Group, said "I told the world over a year ago that anyone who didn't have a switched back-end on their array would have to answer why, and that has certainly proven to be true. Now most every mainstream vendor has adopted InSpeed, and those that haven't are at a clear disadvantage. Switching the disks is the smartest, and cheapest, way to build performance and enhanced availability, period."
Initially introduced in May of 2002, InSpeed was the very first technology to bring high performance switching inside the storage array, enabling new levels of Reliability, Availability and Serviceability (RAS) and performance for storage systems. Leading storage providers such as HP, Network Appliance, Fujitsu, Xyratex, Apple, Quantum, BlueArc and NEC have already deployed solutions with InSpeed and, at present, eight of the world's top ten storage OEMs are either designing InSpeed into new solutions or are in formal test and evaluation phase with the technology.
"HP and Network Appliance were the first adopters of InSpeed-a tremendous validation for what was then an entirely new technology and application," said Jim McCluney, Emulex's President and Chief Operating Officer. "This past January, Emulex began initial customer shipments of its third generation of InSpeed product, the 4 Gb/s InSpeed SOC 422. This latest generation InSpeed SOC, the first embedded switch in the market to implement 4 Gb/s Fibre Channel technology, incorporates integrated SES (SCSI Enclosure Services) management, Trunking and Fairness capabilities, and ships for less than a third of the price of the original product on a per-port basis. And with a broad range of successful OEM implementations completed, Emulex's customer engineering and product development teams have developed an unparalleled level of expertise in helping customers deploy switched back-end storage architectures."
Emulex's InSpeed embedded storage switches replace the legacy shared loop networks that, for many years, were used to transport data to and from the storage devices within disk arrays and tape libraries. As storage demands increase and additional devices are added to increase storage capacity, shared loop transport systems become saturated --as data has to pass through each and every drive port in the chain, creating latency issues and reducing storage system performance. In addition, failure of a single device breaks the loop, often causing an entire drive shelf or drive array to be taken off-line for troubleshooting and repair. InSpeed is the pioneering technology deployed to address these problems.
With over 2 million ports shipped, InSpeed technology is the storage industry's leading solution for creating switched back-end architectures.
About Emulex
Emulex Corporation is the world leader in Fibre Channel HBAs and delivers a broad range of intelligent building blocks for next generation storage networking systems. Emulex was named one of Forbes Magazine's 25 Fastest Growing Technology Companies, and ranked number 15 in Deloitte & Touche's 2003 Technology Fast 50.
The world's leading server and storage providers rely on Emulex HBAs, embedded storage switching and I/O controller products to build reliable, scalable and high performance storage solutions. The Emulex award-winning product families, including its LightPulse(tm) HBAs and InSpeed(tm) embedded storage switching products, are based on internally developed ASIC, firmware and software technologies, and offer customers high performance, scalability, flexibility and reduced total cost of ownership. The company's products have been selected by the world's leading server and storage providers, including Dell, EMC, Fujitsu Ltd., Fujitsu Siemens, Groupe Bull, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance, Quantum Corp., StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, Unisys and Xyratex. In addition, Emulex includes industry leaders Brocade, Computer Associates, Intel, McDATA, and Microsoft among its strategic partners. Corporate headquarters are located in Costa Mesa, California. News releases and other information about Emulex Corporation are available at http://www.emulex.com.
EMULEX -- We network storage
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"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. The company wishes to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Those factors include the rapidly changing nature of technology, evolving industry standards and frequent introductions of new products and enhancements by competitors; fluctuation in the growth of Fibre Channel and IP markets; changes in economic conditions or changes in end-user demand for technology solutions; fluctuations or delays in customer orders; the highly competitive nature of the markets for Emulex's products; Emulex's ability to gain market acceptance for its products; the company's ability to attract and retain skilled personnel; the company's reliance on third-party suppliers. These and other factors, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are also discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its recent filings on Forms 8-K, 10-K and 10-Q.
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