SAN JOSE, Calif., August 20, 2002 - Cisco today announced a broad-based initiative to promote interoperability testing and cross-product qualification with industry partners that span all major categories within the storage industry. This announcement is related to Cisco's introduction of the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Directors and Fabric Switches. Please see http://newsroom.cisco.com.

The goal of these collaborative efforts is to ensure solution-level interoperability for the Cisco MDS 9000 Family with storage products in multiple categories including host bus adapters, storage arrays, tape libraries, storage management applications, replication services, and back-up software.

Specifically, Cisco has begun working with Adaptec Inc., ADIC, BMC Software, EMC Corporation, Emulex Corporation, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM Tivoli, JNI Corporation, Netreon Inc., QLogic Corporation, StorageNetworks, Inc., and VERITAS Software Corporation in an effort to provide interoperable solutions.

"EMC has long believed that all storage will be networked. Cisco's presence will only serve to accelerate that trend," said Erez Ofer, EMC's executive vice president of Open Software Operations. "Cisco's introduction of its new family of storage switches provides further validation of the strength of the Fibre Channel market and the convergence of networked storage technologies. EMC looks forward to testing and qualifying the new Cisco products in our E-Lab facility, the largest and most sophisticated storage interoperability lab in the world."

"Cisco's capabilities in networking, presence in the data center, and commitment to standards will transform storage networking," said Mark Bregman, executive vice president of product operations, VERITAS Software. "VERITAS Software and Cisco are working together to deliver integrated, interoperable solutions to our customers. Through the VERITAS Enabled Program, we are qualifying interoperability of the Cisco MDS 9000 Family with our SANPoint Control, NetBackup, and Foundation Suite products in order to provide our customers with complete storage solutions."

Additionally, Cisco is driving development of storage industry standards, such as its leadership role in authoring the FC-SP draft standard for secure Fibre Channel communication within T11, co-authoring the iSCSI draft standard within the IETF and promoting enhanced manageability through its work in defining new Fibre Channel, SCSI and iSCSI MIBs. Industry standards will help minimize the level of interoperability testing requirements among vendors and increase customer adoption of storage networking platforms such as the Cisco MDS 9000 Family.

"Cisco recognizes that though the Fibre Channel market has advanced greatly through open standards, there is still a need to ensure solutions integration and interoperability, given the business criticality of enterprise storage environments, " said Soni Jiandani, vice president of Marketing for the Cisco Storage Technology Group. "Having broad industry support for the Cisco MDS 9000 Family helps achieve the required level of interoperability and the overall reliability of heterogeneous solution deployments."

For additional supporting quotes from many of these companies, please refer to the addendum at the end of this press release.

About Cisco Systems

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. News and information are available at www.cisco.com.

Cisco, Cisco Systems and the Cisco Systems logo are registered trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.

STORAGE INDUSTRY SUPPORT FOR THE CISCO MDS 9000 FAMILY

Adaptec
"Adaptec and Cisco share a common vision to simplify storage networking and make it broadly available," said Ram Jayam, vice president and general manager of Adaptec's Storage Networking Group. "We look forward to continued work with Cisco to grow the market and drive interoperable iSCSI, FCIP and Fibre Channel solutions."

ADIC
"ADIC welcomes Cisco's introduction of the Cisco MDS 9000 Family and is pleased to be a supporting technology partner. Expanding storage networking with multilayer intelligence and multi-protocol support is critical to the next generation of storage advances," said Paul Rutherford, vice president, Technology, ADIC. "We plan to provide interoperability qualification for the Cisco MDS Family with our tape libraries and backup solutions. When coupled with software products like ADIC's StorNext File System, the Cisco MDS 9000 Family can unlock direct high-performance access to shared storage resources for desktop users. In conjunction with intelligent libraries like ADIC's Scalar series, the Cisco MDS 9000 Family can expand the data protection benefits of enterprise-scale SANs to smaller and more widely-distributed network environments."

BMC Software
"BMC Software values its ongoing technical development efforts with Cisco and is pleased to pair our PATROL Storage Management solutions with the Cisco MDS 9000 Family," said Helmuth Klemm, vice president and general manager, Enterprise Storage Management, BMC Software. "Through development of a PATROL Knowledge Module specifically for the Cisco MDS Family and the interoperability of these joint technologies, BMC Software and Cisco will help customers more efficiently operate and manage their business-critical storage infrastructures."

EMC Corporation
"EMC and Cisco have been working together for several years to drive the growth and convergence of networked storage," said Don Swatik, EMC's vice president of Global Alliances. "We share a common belief in the value that customers can realize from networked storage infrastructures and open standards."

Emulex Corporation
"The introduction of the Cisco MDS 9000 Family is a strong indication of the wide industry acceptance storage networking has achieved," said Mike Smith, executive vice president of Worldwide Marketing at Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX). "End users stand to greatly benefit from the collaboration of Emulex and Cisco in building a high level of interoperability between this new family of switches and Emulex's family of HBAs."

Hitachi Data Systems
"Our TrueNorth initiative is founded on openness and collaboration with leading suppliers," said Scott Genereux, vice president, Worldwide Marketing, Hitachi DataSystems "As such, Hitachi Data Systems welcomes Ciscos entry into the SAN switch market. We are actively working with Cisco to ensure interoperability with our Hitachi Freedom Storage product line in order to provide customers with tested infrastructure solutions."

IBM Tivoli
"Cisco's new capabilities in storage switching brings to market the next generation of intelligent storage network infrastructure. This, combined with new storage management functionality from IBM Tivoli storage software, makes for a powerful combination that provides storage technology flexibility, simplifies management, and drives return on investment for our joint customers," said Jose Iglesias, director storage products, IBM Tivoli Software.

JNI Corporation
"The new Cisco MDS 9000 Family shows the growing importance of storage networking, as well as the need to support multiple protocols in an enterprise environment," said Shaun Walsh, vice president of marketing, JNI Corporation (NasdaqNM:JNIC). "Interoperability is vital to the success of storage networking products; the close cooperation of Cisco and JNI assures our mutual customers will enjoy seamless integration of this new product into their storage network environments."

Netreon, Inc.
"We are pleased to be working with Cisco on storage design and interoperability with the Cisco MDS 9000 Family," said Bob Davis, president and CEO of Netreon, Inc. "With the Cisco MDS 9000 Family, Cisco is accelerating the standardization of storage networking thereby accelerating the adoption of storage networking. With SANexec Designer, Netreon provides Cisco, its partners, and its customers a tool that accelerates their ability to plan, deploy and update storage networks."

QLogic Corp
"QLogic and Cisco are committed to advancing storage networks through open industry standards," said Frank Berry, vice president of marketing, QLogic Corp. "Through our mutual support for FC-SW-2, GS3, and SNMP, and comprehensive interoperability testing, customers can confidently configure SANs based on the Cisco MDS 9000 Family with servers and storage systems powered by QLogic iSCSI and Fibre Channel technology."

StorageNetworks
"As a provider of storage management solutions, StorageNetworks fully supports Cisco's storage initiatives," stated Peter Bell, StorageNetworks, chairman and chief executive officer. "Increasingly, customers are moving toward storage networking and as a result they are demanding state-of-the-art switching technology. We are excited to work with an industry leader such as Cisco as it introduces the Cisco MDS 9000 Family to the market."