Emulex Announces OEM Agreement With Sun

Sun to Sell and Support Sun-Branded Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters from Emulex, Initiating New Business Relationship Between the Two Companies


COSTA MESA, Calif., July 11, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX) today announced it has entered into an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Sun Microsystems. Under the terms of the agreement, Sun will brand, sell and support Fibre Channel host bus adapters from Emulex within the latest Solaris(tm) 10 Operating System (OS) Environment as well as legacy Solaris environments. This agreement enables Sun to sell and support Emulex SAN connectivity solutions to end users who have standardized their data centers on the Emulex family of market-leading LightPulse(r) HBAs.

"Our agreement with Emulex to include their high-performance SAN connectivity technology into our portfolio of end-to-end system and storage solutions ensures we are delivering the tools our customers need to manage and operate mission-critical applications," said James Whitemore, vice president of marketing for Network Storage at Sun. "This OEM agreement means more technology choices, greater flexibility and increased support for our enterprise computing and data center customers."

With a large installed base of Emulex HBAs already within Solaris OS environments and a longstanding history of supporting mutual customers, this new agreement enables the two companies to jointly meet the needs of Sun's large end user customer base. As a trusted supplier of SAN connectivity solutions to the enterprise, Emulex provides the robustness, scalability and performance benefits that fully complement the features and benefits of the Solaris OS coupled with Sun StorEdge(tm) family of storage solutions. The new Sun-branded Emulex HBA is also supported by Sun for Windows and Linux server attachment, as part of Sun's Open SAN initiative. A major benefit for large heterogeneous data centers will be Emulex's unique Universal Boot capability that allows a user to seamlessly deploy the same HBA, including Fibre Channel boot, across multiple hardware architectures and operating systems.

"Entering into an OEM agreement with Sun unlocks exciting opportunities for both companies, and we are looking forward to a long-term strategic and collaborative partnership with Sun that will bring substantial benefits to our mutual customer base," said Jim McCluney, Emulex President and COO. "Teaming with Sun to deliver interoperable, supported storage infrastructure solutions, provides a tremendous opportunity for Emulex to expand its breadth of Solaris users beyond the current installed base. More importantly, this agreement allows our end user customers, such as large financial institutions, to continue deploying the Emulex SAN connectivity solutions they have standardized on throughout their data center environments."

"This is exactly what Sun/Emulex customers have been asking for -- a completely supported solution. Now Sun customers have all the power of the Leadville architecture for their Emulex HBAs. It's a big win-win," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, Enterprise Strategy Group.

Product Information and Availability

The Sun StorEdge HBAs, Models SG-XPCI1FC-EM2 and SG-XPCI2FC-EM2, are based on the industry-leading Emulex 2Gb/s LP10000 family of single and dual channel HBAs. With a robust HBA driver implementation that complements Solaris environments, including Solaris 10, customers may leverage the inherent scalability and performance advantages built into the Emulex family of HBAs. The Models SG-XPCI1FC-EM2 and SG-XPCI2FC-EM2 are available now from Sun and its channel distribution partners.

In addition, Sun is extending its StorEdge SAN Foundation Software by integrating the Emulex-based Fibre Channel Architecture (FCA) driver within the Solaris Operating Environment, which is available on Solaris 10, Solaris 9 and Solaris 8 (update 4 or later). The new Emulex-based HBAs and FCA driver support native Fibre Channel addressing, full multi-pathing capabilities with the SFS Traffic Manager Software, Dynamic Reconfiguration, and the Solaris administrative and management environment. This level of cooperation and support helps to ensure seamless integration and deployment of Emulex HBAs within Sun's leading high-end enterprise server, grid computing and storage environments.

The Sun-branded HBA Models SG-XPCI1FC-EM2 and SG-XPCI2FC-EM2 are available now from Sun and its channel distribution partners. Additionally, Emulex is an official Sun iForce(SM) partner and plans to leverage its various programs and benefits to provide sales support and education surrounding the benefits of standardizing on Emulex HBAs throughout the data center. For more information, please visit http://www.emulex.com/oem/sun

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(r) 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, 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 www.emulex.com.

EMULEX -- We network storage

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