ARMONK, New York, January 7, 2003 - IBM today announced a new, global agreement with Cisco Systems, Inc. to offer customers open storage networking solutions, expanding the two companies' reach into new growth areas for data intensive computing.

Building on the successful strategic alliance between IBM and Cisco, this agreement will enable IBM and IBM Business Partners to offer customers Cisco's MDS 9000 Family products, beginning with the Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director, Cisco MDS 9216 Multilayer Fabric Switch, and associated modules. IBM expects to finish interoperability qualification of these products and announce their availability by the end of the first quarter in 2003.

"The combination of IBM's storage systems and Cisco's storage networking products provides customers with high-performance, scalable and manageable SAN solutions," said Luca Cafiero, senior vice president and general manager of the of the Switching, Voice, and Storage Technology Group at Cisco. "The long history of successful cooperation between IBM and Cisco is continued with this agreement to bring new storage solutions to the marketplace."

"IBM is the first vendor to enter into a reseller agreement for Cisco's new multiprotocol SAN switches, reinforcing IBM's strategy to offer customers the widest range of storage networking solutions," said Roland Hagan, vice president of marketing for Storage Products Division, IBM Systems Group. "IBM and Cisco have had a long, successful relationship working on storage networking solutions. This agreement will enable us to expand to a new customer set including telecommunication customers and customers interested in converging fibre channel and IP storage area networks."

The Cisco MDS 9000 Family is a comprehensive line of SAN switches for storage networks of all sizes and architectures. The Cisco MDS 9000 Family is designed to offer high performance and scalability, and delivers intelligent network services such as multiprotocol/multitransport integration, Virtual SANs (VSANs), security, advanced traffic management, sophisticated diagnostics and unified SAN management. These products are designed to help customers drive SAN consolidation, increase data availability, and more efficiently manage their storage resources.

IBM Systems Group includes a wide range of disk and tape storage products including the IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server (code named "Shark"), IBM TotalStorage FAStT family of midrange disk products, IBM TotalStorage Network Attached Storage, IBM TotalStorage Enterprise Tape System and Enterprise Tape Library as well as the IBM TotalStorage UltraScalable Tape Library and Ultrium Scalable Tape Library, based on Linear Tape-Open technology. In addition, IBM Tivoli Storage Area Network Manager now provides SAN management support for the Cisco MDS 9000 Family.

About IBM

IBM develops and manufactures the industry's most advanced information technologies, including computer systems, software, networking systems, storage devices and microelectronics. IBM Systems Group and IBM Tivoli Software offers customers worldwide the most comprehensive range of storage products available today. These storage solutions are offered through IBM as well as a large network of IBM Business Partners. For more information, visit www.ibm.com/totalstorage or www.tivoli.com/storage.