MCDT Mcdata

Sun customers looking to reap the benefits of FICON while leveraging their existing investments in ESCON can now do so with the availability of McDATA Corporation's (Nasdaq: MCDTA)(Nasdaq: MCDT) Intrepid FICON Converter (IFC). When properly planned, and executed, a FICON migration can bring tremendous technical, management, and business improvements to a company. "We can now provide native FICON connectivity to our customers who use legacy ESCON Devices," said Nigel Dessau, vice president of storage marketing and business operations, Sun Microsystems. "This will protect our customers' existing investment in ESCON-based resources while enabling seamless and cost-effective migration to FICON." Due to limitations in ESCON and new advancements in FICON architectures, performance advantages and technical merits of FICON over ESCON are now significant enough to justify ESCON to FICON migration projects. Sun's new ESCON to FICON suite of services allows customers a cost-effective solution to easily migrate to a consolidated FICON environment. When combined with the Intrepid FICON Converter, this solution provides the means to protect large investments in ESCON devices, reducing maintenance expenses for ESCON directors. Furthermore, it enhances performance, enables improved disaster protection and better utilizes IT spending for connectivity infrastructure. "McDATA and Sun's strong partnership has enabled us to provide FICON migration products and services that address the needs of mainframe customers," said Chris Roberts, vice president of OEM Channel Development, McDATA. "As experts in Enterprise mainframe solutions and ESCON to FICON Data Migration we can complement Sun's offering of top-level storage solutions." About McDATA (www.mcdata.com) McDATA (NASDAQ Global Select: MCDTA)(NASDAQ Global Select: MCDT) is the leading provider of data access solutions, helping customers build, globally connect, optimize and centrally manage data infrastructures across SAN, MAN and WAN environments. With nearly 25 years experience developing SAN products, services and solutions, McDATA is the trusted partner in the world's largest data centers, connecting more than two-thirds of all networked data. Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains statements about expected future events that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. Readers are urged to consider statements that include the terms "believes," "belief," "expects," "plans," "objectives," "estimates," "anticipates," "intends," "targets," or the like to be uncertain and forward-looking. Factors that could cause actual results to differ and vary materially from expectations include, but are not limited to, McDATA's relationships with EMC, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems and the level of their orders, aggressive price competition by numerous other SAN and IP switch suppliers, OEM qualification of our new products, integration of CNT's sales and marketing functions, manufacturing constraints, constraints in obtaining third-party product for resale and other risk factors that are disclosed in McDATA's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These cautionary statements by McDATA should not be construed as exhaustive or as any admission regarding the adequacy of disclosures made by McDATA. All cautionary statements should be read as being applicable to all forward-looking statements wherever they appear. McDATA does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise