ORLANDO, Fla. (Storage Networking World) - October 25, 2005 - Cisco Systems, Inc. ® announced today availability of the Cisco MDS 9020 Fabric Switch, a 20-port 4 gigabit per second Fibre Channel storage area networking (SAN) switch designed as a cost-effective solution to deploy high performance small and medium size SANs. Offering simplified deployment and administration, the Cisco MDS 9020 is ideal for small and medium businesses (SMBs), branch offices, and enterprise workgroup applications. Partners planning to offer the Cisco MDS 9020 Fabric Switch include EMC, HP, IBM, Network Appliance, and Xiotech.
"The SMB space is the growth area for networked storage, and it's largely a green-field opportunity," said Steve Duplessie, Founder and Senior Analyst at The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. "Customers are ready and willing to implement SAN technologies if the price is right, and the complexities are gone."
With the Cisco MDS 9020, organizations can deploy cost-effective, high performance SANs that provide enterprise-class features such as non-disruptive firmware upgrades for high availability, extensive diagnostics for quick troubleshooting, and advanced management capabilities through Cisco Fabric Manager. Included at no additional charge with the Cisco MDS 9020, Cisco Fabric Manager is a rich, GUI-based management tool that provides fabric-wide discovery and simplified SAN management to help organizations scale and grow their SANs to larger fabrics as needed. Cisco Fabric Manager helps administrators perform vital tasks such as topology discovery, fabric configuration and verification, provisioning, monitoring, and fault resolution.
"The Cisco MDS 9020 Fabric Switch is a cost-effective and easy-to-deploy SAN switch that fits well with IBM System Storage solutions for the small to medium business market," said Robert Mahoney, VP and Business Line Executive for IBM Storage Networking and Sales. "IBM has a strong focus on supporting our SMB customers, who will benefit from the affordability, ease of deployment, and simple fabric management offered by the Cisco MDS 9020."
The Cisco MDS 9020 can be deployed in small or medium stand alone SANs or as an edge switch in larger core-edge enterprise SANs. Because the Cisco MDS 9020 is compatible with the entire family of MDS switches and directors, it offers scalability and investment protection for organizations planning to grow their SANs over time.
"EMC is committed to providing our customers with storage networking solutions that can grow with their needs and offer maximum investment protection," said Tom Joyce, EMC Vice President, Storage Platforms Marketing. "As part of the EMC Connectrix family of switches and directors, the Cisco MDS 9020 will offer flexibility, ease of deployment and the scalability to help customers consolidate their data in support of an information lifecycle management strategy."
The Cisco MDS 9020 Fabric Switch is expected to be generally available through most OEM partners starting in November.
