Emulex and Brocade Advance End-to-End Gen 5 Fibre Channel SAN Capabilities

FRANKFURT, Germany and COSTA MESA, Calif., Oct. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- SNW EUROPE -- Emulex Corporation (NYSE: ELX), a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, today announced that the company is working with Brocade, (NASDAQ: BRCD), the leader in data center fabric networking solutions, to improve the reliability, availability, and manageability of Gen 5 Fibre Channel (FC) based storage area networks (SANs) in the enterprise data center and the cloud. Specifically, Emulex and Brocade have worked together to integrate Brocade's ClearLink diagnostics technology into Emulex LightPulse® Gen 5 FC Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).

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"As customers migrate mission-critical, private cloud, and flash-accelerated workloads to Gen 5 FC fabrics, performance, quality of service (QoS) and infrastructure reliability become more critical," said Shaun Walsh, senior vice president of marketing and corporate development, Emulex. "ClearLink is the first of the Gen 5 FC capabilities that Emulex will be providing to ensure the reliability and management of storage network configurations when connected to Brocade Gen 5 FC SAN fabrics."

ClearLink Diagnostics

Detecting faults in the physical infrastructure remains challenging and the ability to quickly identify and isolate optics and cable problems can make a significant difference in operational expenditures (OPEX) for both pre-production and production environments.

With ClearLink diagnostics, data centers can identify and isolate optics and cable problems much faster – in a matter of minutes instead of days. For new SAN installations, ClearLink allows administrators to validate that their SANs can operate under full data loads prior to deploying production applications.  

ClearLink diagnostics deliver these capabilities by performing a series of tests on both Brocade Gen 5 FC switches and Emulex Gen 5 FC HBAs. This includes running a series of electrical and optical loopback tests that can detect problems with the physical cabling and optics that could result in increased error rates and intermittent problems.

ClearLink enables best practices for deploying or changing the physical ports and cabling within the SAN infrastructure by allowing administrators to verify end-to-end connectivity and performance prior to moving to production. These capabilities help IT administrators and architects maximize application uptime and performance while reducing overall OPEX by allowing them to distinguish between faults due to marginal cable, optics modules, as well as connector or optics seating.

"Brocade's ClearLink diagnostics technology has proven itself over the past couple of years by improving the reliability and availability for Gen 5 Fibre Channel SANs," said Jack Rondoni, vice president, Data Center Storage and Solutions, Brocade. "We are very pleased to work with Emulex to broaden the ecosystem for ClearLink which, as a result, will increase the overall value that Gen 5 Fibre Channel delivers across our mutual customer's SAN environments."

"While SANs have always brought the gold standard in reliability and availability, they have not actively addressed physical challenges that remain one of the top pain points in the data center," said Ben Woo, managing director, Neuralytix. "Emulex and Brocade are working together to build on Fibre Channel's core values of reliability, availability and performance, allowing SAN administrators to increase customer satisfaction through improved application uptime, resulting in fewer customer support calls."

"Cables and optics are one of the primary problems we see in our lab tests," said Dennis Martin, founder and president, Demartek. "The ability to identify and detect from a centralized console where the issue lies, saves a tremendous amount of time and aggravation during new system setups, and having a proven solution supported by two of the leading Fibre Channel vendors in the market will be of great benefit to the industry."

ClearLink diagnostics will be supported on currently shipping Emulex Gen 5 FC HBAs and Converged Fabric Adapters (CFAs) in the first quarter of 2014.  For pricing information, please contact Emulex at www.emulex.com.

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About Emulex
Emulex, a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, provides hardware and software solutions for global networks that support enterprise, cloud, government and telecommunications. Emulex's products enable unrivaled end-to-end application visibility, optimization and acceleration. The Company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of ultra high-performance Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, have been designed into server and storage solutions from leading OEMs, including Cisco, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Huawei, IBM, NetApp and Oracle, and can be found in the data centers of nearly all of the Fortune 1000. Emulex's monitoring and management solutions, including its portfolio of network visibility and recording products, provide organizations with complete network performance management at speeds up to 100Gb Ethernet. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. For more information about Emulex (NYSE:ELX) please visit http://www.Emulex.com.

"Safe Harbor" Statement
"Safe Harbor'' Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above, contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or changes to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. We wish to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the possibility that we may not realize the anticipated benefits from the acquisition of Endace on a timely basis or at all, and may be unable to integrate the technology, operations and personnel of Endace into our existing operations in a timely and efficient manner.  In addition, intellectual property claims, with or without merit, that could result in costly litigation, cause product shipment delays, require us to indemnify customers, or require us to enter into royalty or licensing agreements, which may or may not be available. Furthermore, we have in the past obtained, and may be required in the future to obtain, licenses of technology owned by other parties. We cannot be certain that the necessary licenses will be available or that they can be obtained on commercially reasonable terms. If we were to fail to obtain such royalty or licensing agreements in a timely manner and on reasonable terms, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. Ongoing lawsuits, such as the action brought by Broadcom Corporation (Broadcom), present inherent risks, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations. Such potential risks include continuing expenses of litigation, loss of patent rights, monetary damages, injunctions against the sale of products incorporating the technology in question, counterclaims, attorneys' fees, incremental costs associated with product or component redesigns, liabilities to customers under reimbursement agreements or contractual indemnification provisions, and diversion of management's attention from other business matters. With respect to the continuing Broadcom litigation, such potential risks also include the adequacy of any sunset period to make design changes, the ability to implement any design changes, the availability of customer resources to complete any re-qualification or re-testing that may be needed, the ability to maintain favorable working relationships with Emulex suppliers of serializer/deserializer (SerDes) modules, and the ability to obtain a settlement which does not put us at a competitive disadvantage. In addition, the fact that the economy generally, and the technology and storage market segments specifically, have been in a state of uncertainty makes it difficult to determine if past experience is a good guide to the future and makes it impossible to determine if markets will grow or shrink in the short term. Continued weakness in domestic and worldwide macro-economic conditions, related disruptions in world credit and equity markets, and the resulting economic uncertainty for our customers, as well as the storage and converged networking market as a whole, has and could continue to adversely affect our revenues and results of operations. As a result of these uncertainties, we are unable to predict our future results with any accuracy. Other factors affecting these forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the following: faster than anticipated declines in the storage networking market, slower than expected growth of the converged networking market or the failure of our Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers to successfully incorporate our products into their systems; our dependence on a limited number of customers and the effects of the loss of, decrease in or delays of orders by any such customers, or the failure of such customers to make timely payments; the emergence of new or stronger competitors as a result of consolidation movements in the market; the timing and market acceptance of our products or our OEM customers' new or enhanced products; costs associated with entry into new areas of the network, server and storage technology markets; the variability in the level of our backlog and the variable and seasonal procurement patterns of our customers; any inadequacy of our intellectual property protection and the costs of actual or potential third-party claims of infringement and any related indemnity obligations or adverse judgments; the effect of any actual or potential unsolicited offers to acquire us; proxy contests or the activities of activist investors; impairment charges, including but not limited to goodwill and intangible assets; changes in tax rates or legislation; the effects of acquisitions; the effects of terrorist activities, natural disasters, and any resulting disruption in our supply chain or customer purchasing patterns or any other resulting economic or political instability; the highly competitive nature of the markets for our products as well as pricing pressures that may result from such competitive conditions; the effects of changes in our business model to separately charge for software; the effect of rapid migration of customers towards newer, lower cost product platforms; transitions from board or box level to application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) solutions for selected applications; a shift in unit product mix from higher-end to lower-end or mezzanine card products; a faster than anticipated decrease in the average unit selling prices or an increase in the manufactured cost of our products; delays in product development; our reliance on third-party suppliers and subcontractors for components and assembly; our ability to attract and retain key technical personnel; our ability to benefit from our research and development activities; our dependence on international sales and internationally produced products; changes in accounting standards; and any resulting regulatory changes on our business. These and other factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements and are discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, under the caption "Risk Factors."

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Press Contacts:
Katherine Lane
Director, Corporate Communications
+ 1 714-885-3828
[email protected]

Jolene Peixoto
Senior Manager, Public Relations and Social Media
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SOURCE Emulex Corporation

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