INDUSTRY

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc., the world's leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), today announced that Germany's third largest mobile phone provider is upgrading its SAN infrastructure with Brocade SilkWorm(R) 12000 Directors. E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co., which provides GSM phone service to more than eight million customers, is integrating the new directors into a core-to-edge design that provides redundancy, reliability, and the scalability it needs to keep pace with data growth resulting from new services and a burgeoning customer base. The enhanced and expanded SAN infrastructure supports a heterogeneous environment that includes more than 200 UNIX and Intel servers and storage systems from EMC, HP and HDS. E-Plus operates two fully redundant SANs, at separate sites 18 km apart from each other, with each site using two Brocade Directors and eight SilkWorm 3900 switches for each network core, with Brocade fabric switches deployed at the edge. "The new SAN design, coupled with the latest generation of 32-port switches, is the basis on which our SAN can continue to grow," said Volker Westphal, Executive Director Operations and E-Plus board member. "We also plan to successively exchange currently installed Brocade SilkWorm 2800 switches with SilkWorm 3900s switches, so we can raise the number of ports as necessary and protect our investments. Despite unrelenting growth, the SAN is easy to administer, which relieves us of a great burden." E-Plus initially moved from Direct Attached Storage to Brocade-based SAN technology in 2000, and incrementally expanded the infrastructure over several years. The proven growth path between different generations of Brocade SAN infrastructure devices and the compatibility with storage systems from all major providers affords E-Plus the confidence to plan for future expansion while protecting its total IT investment. "In industries as fiercely competitive as telecommunications, a forward-looking storage infrastructure means a real edge over competitors," said Uli Plechschmidt, Regional Director Central Region at Brocade. "With a new SAN strategy to keep IT costs permanently low, including support for utility computing and information lifecycle management, E-Plus is ideally equipped for the future."