PALM DESERT, Calif. - April 9, 2001 - Cisco Systems, Inc. today announced the details of the Cisco Storage Networking initiative at Storage Networking World, Spring 2001. Cisco Storage Networking is a comprehensive set of technologies, products, and partnerships that enables the development of a networked storage infrastructure based on an open architecture and industry standards.

Based on Cisco AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data), Cisco Storage Networking allows customers to adopt a strategy for accessing, managing, and protecting their growing information resources across a converged IP, Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, and optical network infrastructure. To that end, Cisco Storage Networking delivers a network foundation that spans local, metropolitan, and wide area environments and helps accelerate the deployment of both block-based Storage Area Networks (SANs) and file-based Network Attached Storage (NAS).

"It's inevitable that storage networking, Internet, and optical networking converge," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst, The Enterprise Storage Group. "A unified infrastructure with common management has been a utopian pipe dream until now. A company like Cisco has all the pieces to make the convergence not only happen, but happen globally and quickly."

An Open, Industry-Wide Initiative

As part of the Cisco AVVID Partner Program, Cisco has formed close working relationships with the market leaders in key storage sectors, which include storage subsystems, storage management, storage networking, and system I/O technologies. Specifically, Cisco has been working with Alacritech, Brocade, EMC, Emulex, IBM, Intel, Network Appliance, and VERITAS by driving new storage standards and conducting rigorous solutions development and testing.

"EMC and Cisco are working closely to enable our mutual customers to realize the business benefits of networked storage," said Bill Nelson, Senior Vice President of Content and Information Center Markets at EMC. "By combining Cisco's converged IP and optical networks and EMC's information infrastructure, customers can rapidly deploy and effectively manage storage networks that deliver information of all types where it's needed, when it's needed."

Enabling New Storage Networking Applications

The combined efforts of these companies deliver Cisco's vision for a storage network model that provide enhanced storage consolidation, business continuance, and storage outsourcing. This model relies on key applications and their respective "enabling technologies". They are:

• IP Access to Storage

  To provide ubiquitous access to storage devices over IP networks, Cisco worked with IBM to formulate and propose the iSCSI protocol, or SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) over IP. Currently, over 250 companies are actively driving iSCSI towards draft-standard status in the IETF. Several companies, including IBM and Emulex, have announced storage and server products that support iSCSI.

  Today Cisco announced the Cisco SN 5420 Storage Router, an iSCSI-based networking platform that enables applications such as storage consolidation, remote data backup, and archiving to tape. To achieve enhanced host TCP I/O performance, Cisco is also working with companies such as Alacritech, Emulex, and Intel to develop TCP-accelerated and iSCSI-compatible NICs (network interface cards).

  "The e-business revolution has driven storage from the backroom to the center of the IT network," said Linda Sanford, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Storage Systems Group. "With this shift comes the need for universal access to data which can only be delivered through open, industry standard solutions. IBM and Cisco are leading this drive to openness through our iSCSI initiatives and a shared common vision for providing safe, efficient access to data."

• Storage over WAN

  To build a truly company-wide storage resource, storage internetworking across wide area networks is critical. As the leader in IP networking, Cisco is well-positioned to enable remote connectivity for both SAN and NAS environments. To deliver Cisco Storage Networking's SAN interconnect solution, Cisco is working closely with Brocade to help drive ratification of the proposed FCIP (Fibre Channel over IP) IETF standard, and to develop FCIP-based products.

  "Brocade is committed to offering our customers the widest array of SAN internetworking options. As the result of our joint development and solutions initiatives with Cisco, our mutual customers can seamlessly internetwork SANs through Cisco's DWDM optical, iSCSI, and FCIP networking solutions across the campus, MAN and WAN," said Jack Cuthbert, Brocade vice president of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Support Services.

• Storage over Metro Optical

  Metropolitan area optical networking is critical for providing high-capacity, low- latency transport for major applications such as disaster recovery, storage consolidation and outsourcing. Cisco Storage Networking builds upon Cisco's leading IP+Optical solutions, and in particular, upon Cisco's expanding portfolio of metropolitan DWDM systems. DWDM provides high-capacity, protocol-independent access and transport of storage traffic across metropolitan areas using Gigabit Ethernet, Fibre Channel, or ESCON. Cisco currently offers two metro DWDM platforms, in addition to market-leading SONET and IP metro optical solutions.

• Network Attached Storage

  Network Attached Storage (NAS) already leverages IP networking to ensure optimized file sharing across the IT infrastructure. By delivering high performance, intelligent, and highly available TCP/IP networks for LAN and WAN environments through Gigabit Ethernet-enabled Catalyst switches, Cisco IOS routers, and various other leading networking products, Cisco Storage Networking addresses the requirements for file-based storage networks. Additionally, by working with the leaders in the NAS market, such as EMC and Network Appliance, Cisco is enabling broader access to storage, high availability and scalability while reducing the total cost of ownership through the use of open standards based IP network technologies and commonly available networking expertise.

  "Network Appliance has long pioneered and developed network-centric storage solutions that leverage customers' investments in the IP-based networks they know and trust. We view iSCSI as another step in the evolution of storage networking that capitalizes on the benefits of open IP infrastructures, and look forward to working with Cisco and others to bring robust new solutions to our customers." said Mark Santora, senior vice president of marketing, Network Appliance, Inc.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

Cisco Storage Networking offers these benefits to customers with the bottom line goal of reducing their total cost of ownership, while improving data protection and storage scalability. A critical component to the initiative's overall success is effectively managing this storage network infrastructure. For this, Cisco is working closely with industry leaders in storage management technologies.

"As the storage area and IP networking worlds converge, VERITAS believes it is important to work closely with Cisco, who is extending its leadership in IP networking to the IP storage networking arena," said Peter Levine, executive vice president, Strategic and Platform Operations, VERITAS Software. "Our vision is to deliver consolidated storage management capabilities across interconnected, global IP and optical network infrastructures."