Force10 Networks Reports Dramatic Quarterly Sequential Revenue Growth

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Force10 Networks, Inc., the global technology leader that service provider, enterprise, and data center operators rely on when the network is their business, today announced that its third quarter revenues for the period ending June 30, 2009 increased 24% from the previous quarter. A significant portion of Force10's dramatic sequential revenue growth during this time was attributed to increasing momentum behind the company's industry-leading Ethernet switch/router products with both data center and carrier customers.

"Force10 Networks experienced significant sequential growth across several different areas of its business," says Henry Wasik, president and CEO of Force10 Networks. "Decision makers recognize that Force10 solutions deliver a high level of performance and overall cost effectiveness that makes their network infrastructure not simply a cost center, but a strategic asset that can be leveraged to their competitive advantage. As content and services become virtualized, and cloud services deployments accelerate, we see a growing need for our economically disruptive products and solutions."

ExaScale Switch/Router Product Momentum Continues to Build

The Force10 ExaScale E-Series virtualized core switch/router, which was introduced in March 2009 and first began to ship in volume during Force10's Q3, was a significant contributor to the company's quarterly growth. ExaScale delivers industry-leading 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) and 10/100/1000Base-T density with line-rate and non-blocking scalability, while reducing power consumption by as much as 70 percent versus comparable competitive platforms - the industry's lowest consumption rate. ExaScale delivers densities up to 140 10 GbE ports and 1,260 GbE ports per half-rack system. Optimized for deployments in high performance computing clusters, data centers, enterprise backbone and service provider carrier Ethernet core markets, the ExaScale product portfolio is designed specifically to deliver unmatched performance, flexibility and ongoing investment protection.

Significant Customer Wins, Product Enhancements and New Partnerships Signal Continued GrowthNew wins at mid-sized data centers and carrier points of presence (POPs) also supported ExaScale's sales momentum during the quarter. Additionally, Force10 teamed with Ixia at Interop to perform the world's largest-ever 10 GbE scaling test achieving full line-rate, non-blocking switching of 140 10 GbE ports and realizing throughput of more than 2 billion packets per second. Scaling to these densities at full line-rate ensures that network architects can deliver new network economics by significantly simplifying the network topology, while reducing power, space and cooling overhead. Lastly, the first announced ExaScale customer was realized during the third quarter in Brookhaven National Laboratory, whose core network Force10 helped scale to 10 GbE speeds.

"A crucial go-to-market success for Force10 recently was the company entering into an agreement with Tech Data to distribute our Ethernet switch/router products throughout North America," says James Hanley, president of field operations, Force10 Networks. "Broadening our distribution scope, coupled with the overall increased market recognition of our virtualized switch/router technology, has enabled Force10 to make significant progress to date with bookings to our service provider customers, ecosystem partners, distributors and systems integrators representing more than 35% of our business during the third quarter."