INDUSTRY

BOTHELL, WA -- Vixel Corporation (Nasdaq:VIXL), a leading provider of storage networking products and technologies, announced today that Hitachi Ltd. of Japan has completed its certification of Vixel's 9200 16-port 2 Gb/s switch for use with its Hitachi SANRISE 1000 Series of storage solutions (available from Hitachi Data Systems outside Japan as the Hitachi Freedom Storage(TM) Thunder 9200(TM)). Also certified by Hitachi Ltd. was Vixel's 9300HA 16-port 2 Gb/s switch, which features dual power supplies for mission critical applications. With this certification, the easy-to-deploy SANRISE 1000 Series, which provides up to 6.4TB of storage for midrange enterprise users, now offers Vixel's 9200 and 9300HA 16-port 2 Gb/s switches in a high performance, highly available networked storage configuration. "The viability and performance of our 9000 Series two-gigabit switches continue to drive broad certification with storage industry leaders," said Beth White, vice president of marketing for Vixel Corporation. "With Hitachi's global presence, end users both domestically and abroad will now have the opportunity to leverage the performance of Vixel's 2 Gb/s technology. We are extremely pleased that Hitachi has invested its efforts in our product and we consider this certification further validation of Vixel's technology by one of the preeminent solution providers in storage networking." "Hitachi's SANRISE 1000 Series is a highly progressive offering that incorporates features and functionality normally available only in high-end enterprise solutions into an easy-to-implement and use midrange storage solution," said Hidefumi Masuzaki, general manager, Storage Subsystem of Hitachi, Ltd., Disk Array Systems Division. "After extensive testing, Vixel's 9200 and 9300HA have shown that they meet Hitachi's stringent requirements for inclusion into its SANRISE 1000 Series. We look forward to working with Vixel, a company that consistently offers innovative high performance technologies." Designed to meet the storage needs of companies operating heterogeneous computing environments, the SANRISE 1000 supports virtually all high-end storage management features that have become standard for users of the most powerful, centrally managed, enterprise-class storage systems.