Brocade Provides ZF Friedrichshafen With Cost-Efficient Storage Area Network and Technology Investment Protection

Leading German Automotive Supplier Selects Brocade SilkWorm 12000 Director

SAN JOSE, Calif., May 6 -- Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade(R)) , the world's leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), today announced that ZF Friedrichshafen AG, a world leading manufacturer of automotive driveline and chassis systems, has selected Brocade SilkWorm 12000 Directors as the foundation for its next generation SAN. The automotive supplier will deploy two Brocade directors in a core-to-edge design with dual redundant fabrics in each SAN to support its mission-critical systems.

ZF has been using a production SAN based on Brocade SilkWorm fabric switches that served the company well for four years. When ZF began planning an upgrade to accommodate current and future data growth, they evaluated Brocade's ability to provide scalability and flexibility, while supporting their disaster recovery strategies.

Forward and backward compatibility in all the switches and directors in the Brocade SilkWorm family translated to investment protection and a cost effective solution for ZF, which re-deployed its existing fabric switches as edge switches in the new SAN.

The new SAN design also gives the company more flexibility in budgeting its resources. Using Brocade SAN management software to assess data traffic patterns and loads, ZF planners receive information to help them anticipate future needs. If applications require more storage, ZF will have no problem scaling to meet the need. "This expandability is essential for our business," explained Pietro Sortino, who oversees the SAN Migration project at ZF Friedrichshafen AG. "Brocade offered us a solution that met our long-term scalability requirements with a design that could be flexibly adapted to support our growing need for storage capacity."

With dual redundant fabrics spanning the 1.5 mile distance between ZF's two data centers, the new SAN also supports ZF's disaster recovery strategy. If one of the data centers experiences a disaster, all production services can be restored within 48 hours at the intact data center. In addition, the SAN also takes advantage of Brocade Inter Switch Links with load-balancing capability bundled to provide data transmission speeds of 8 Gbit/sec between the two sites. That means mission-critical applications such as SAP, Oracle and the product data management system, Axalant, which run on Windows, Linux, AIX and HP UX servers, can be synchronously mirrored and optimally protected against any risk of downtime.

"Brocade is committed to providing the best technology investment protection possible to our customers," said Uli Plechschmidt, Brocade Regional Director Central Region. "We were delighted to provide ZF with a design that allowed them to make optimal use of their existing resources today, while gaining the enterprise-class features they required for their mission critical applications."

Background Information ZF Friedrichshafen AG

ZF ranks 15th among worldwide automotive suppliers, with 53,300 employees at 119 locations in 25 countries and total revenues of some 9.2 billion euros (2002). Today, the range of ZF products includes transmissions, steering systems, and chassis components along with complete axle systems and modules. The core products manufactured by ZF place the company among the industry's top three suppliers. For more information, visit the internet at www.zf.com.

About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Brocade offers the industry's leading intelligent platform for networking storage. The world's leading systems, applications, and storage vendors have selected Brocade to provide a networking foundation for their SAN solutions. The Brocade SilkWorm(R) family of fabric switches and software is designed to optimize data availability and storage and server resources in the enterprise. Using Brocade solutions, companies can simplify the implementation of storage area networks, reduce the total cost of ownership of data storage environments, and improve network and application efficiency. For more information, visit the Brocade website at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.

NOTE: Brocade, the Brocade B weave logo, Secure Fabric OS, and SilkWorm are registered trademarks of Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., in the United States and/or in other countries. FICON is a registered trademark of IBM Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands, products, or service names are or may be trademarks or service marks of, and are used to identify, products or services of their respective owners.