LAS VEGAS (Gartner PlanetStorage) - June 14, 2004 - Cisco Systems, Inc.® today announced that Electronic Arts (EA), the world's leading interactive entertainment software company, has begun standardizing its storage area networking (SAN) infrastructure using the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Intelligent directors and fabric switches in order to more effectively manage nearly 200 terabytes of storage capacity, which EA expects to grow four-fold over the next few years.

Through consolidation, EA will be able to manage a shared SAN infrastructure able to support and manage multiple applications, hosts (servers), and storage devices, which lead to increased operational efficiency and lowered total cost of ownership.

"The key technology that helped us move to a consolidated SAN approach was Virtual SANs (VSANs), which allow us to build a large SAN that can be partitioned logically into small SANs to suit the storage requirements of different applications," said Greg Bartlett, Director of Systems Integration at EA. "Through the Cisco MDS 9000-based SAN and the vastly improved scalability it provides, we will better adapt to our rapidly growing storage needs across our entire company."

As part of this SAN deployment, which includes a combination of Cisco MDS 9509 directors and Cisco MDS 9216 fabric switches, EA also is integrating a number of Cisco MDS 9000 IP Storage Services Modules to take advantage of both iSCSI and FCIP connectivity.

"EA's SAN consolidation project using the Cisco MDS 9000 is, in many ways, a model for how companies can maximize all of the advanced capabilities available on these switches," said Soni Jiandani, vice president of Marketing for the Storage Technology Group at Cisco. "This deployment supports our vision for this platform: Delivering multi-layered, integrated intelligent network and storage services that will allow end-users to build larger, smarter and more reliable SANs."