Emulex Intros 8-Gbit/s FC Wares

COSTA MESA, Calif. -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX - News) today announced plans to deliver an 8Gb/s product family that provides enterprise-class end users with the ability to seamlessly transition to next-generation Fibre Channel storage area networks (SANs). The new 8Gb/s PCI Express-based product family, including Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) and an Embedded I/O Controller (IOC), is designed to offer industry-leading security, data integrity and virtualization features, while maintaining backward compatibility with existing 4Gb/s and 2Gb/s Fibre Channel SANs. The Emulex LightPulse(r) HBAs are equipped with a Service Level Interface (SLI(tm)), which enables driver compatibility across all generations of Emulex HBAs. Additionally, its speed matching capabilities allow IT administrators to seamlessly integrate 8Gb/s connectivity into existing Fibre Channel SANs.

``Our customers, including more than 95 of the Fortune 100 companies, operate in complex and expanding storage environments,'' said Mike Smith, executive vice president of worldwide marketing, Emulex Corporation. ``When customers migrate to next-generation data centers, they'll experience a seamless transition, leveraging the same drivers and management applications, thereby reinforcing the Emulex value proposition. Already, our 8Gb/s products have achieved OEM design wins on multiple platforms.''

Emulex is once again validating its market leadership by being first to announce its 8Gb/s products, including the new LPe12000 family of HBAs, custom mezzanine cards for server blades and an 8Gb/s Embedded I/O Controller (IOC), the Emulex IOC 540. Emulex's 8Gb/s product prototypes are currently undergoing development testing and the company will begin delivering samples to OEMs for qualification this quarter.

``Consolidation of assets through server and storage virtualization as well as multi-core and bladed servers is a key mantra for today's IT executive,'' noted Richard Villars, vice president of storage system research at IDC. ``With this concentration of server and storage assets, the delivery of 8Gb/s Fibre Channel infrastructure solutions like those being introduced by Emulex will be critical in ensuring adequate network capacity for tomorrow's data centers.''

Emulex Corp.