COSTA MESA, Calif., June 27, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), the industry's preeminent source for a broad range of advanced storage networking infrastructure solutions, today announced that its recent standards submission, initially described as "SATA Tunneling Over Fibre Channel technology", is now officially approved for technical standards development by the ANSI T11 committee and officially named "FC-SATA".
First introduced to the ANSI T11 committee by Emulex, FC-SATA extends the capabilities of Fibre Channel to connect SATA disk drives without the need for complete system re-design to SAS technologies or using expensive Fibre Channel bridging solutions. SATA drive usage is increasingly popular with enterprise storage system manufacturers looking to create systems that offer greater capacity at a lower cost for nearline storage applications. This is fueling the delivery of multi-tiered storage environments, in which high performance, high availability Fibre Channel disk drives are used for on-line data processing, and lower costs SATA disk drives are used for nearline data retention and other large volume storage needs. Detailed information about FC-SATA can be found at www.emulex.com/fcsata.
"IDC predicts increasing adoption of SATA drives as part of storage system deployments through 2009," said Dave Reinsel, program director for storage research at IDC. "Companies are increasingly looking to multi-tiered storage solutions that capitalize on the efficiencies and economies presented by the different storage technologies. Efforts to leverage existing FC infrastructure with new standards such as FC-SATA will certainly be welcomed by the overall storage market."
FC-SATA is currently in the formal standard development stages and will serve as an official guideline for vendors looking to cost effectively incorporate the use of low cost, high capacity SATA disk drives into Fibre Channel-based storage systems. The FC-SATA standard provides storage system providers with a bridgeless tiered storage solution that reduces overall system cost without a complete system redesign.
"When Emulex engineers first conceived of this concept, we were confident the industry would embrace FC-SATA technology because of the tremendous benefits it brings to both storage system providers and end users," said Mike Smith, vice president of worldwide marketing at Emulex. "FC-SATA not only protects existing investments in Fibre Channel, but also leverages its robust, field proven capabilities."
Current supporters and contributors to the FC-SATA standard project currently include Agilent, Brocade, Hitachi GST, McDATA and Seagate. Emulex first publicly demonstrated the technology at Storage Networking World, held in Phoenix, Arizona in April 2005.
About Emulex
Emulex Corporation is the industry's preeminent source for a broad range of advanced storage networking infrastructure solutions spanning host bus adapters, embedded storage switches, I/O controllers and SAN Storage Switches. Emulex ranked number 16 in the Deloitte 2004 Technology Fast 50 and most recently received recognition as one of Forbes 200 Best Small Companies.
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, Bull, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, Engenio, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance, Quantum Corp., StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, Unisys and Xyratex. In addition, Emulex includes industry leaders Brocade, Computer Associates, Intel, McDATA, Microsoft and VERITAS 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
"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.