MANUFACTURING

Force10 Networks announced today that it doubled customer deployments worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2003, ending Dec. 31. In addition, the company signed significant new global partnerships, including IBM, announced the industry's most compact line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet platform and added two networking veterans to its management team. "From supercomputing clusters to large data centers, 10 Gigabit Ethernet firmly established itself in 2003 as the cost-effective next-generation networking technology," said Marc Randall, CEO of Force10 Networks. "Where high performance networks were once the domain of research labs, we are now seeing enterprises adopt the same technology, and Force10 is leading this transition by bringing resiliency and scalability to network performance." In the U.S., the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) deployed Force10 in phase two of the TeraGrid project, a multi-institutional effort to build the world's most comprehensive computing infrastructure for open scientific research. The NCSA deployment also marked one of the first deployments resulting from a worldwide partnership agreement between Force10 and IBM. As part of the agreement, IBM will resell the Force10 E-Series and provide end-to-end support for enterprise customers worldwide. Friendster also recently deployed the Force10 E-Series to speed the process through which it creates networked communities, allowing the online community to expand its subscriber base without impacting service. At Telecom Geneva, the Force10 E-Series provided the foundation for the industry's first 10 Gigabit Ethernet transcontinental transmission, proving that native Ethernet is ready for long haul deployments. In such countries as Korea and China, 10 Gigabit Ethernet technology has already moved into the public telecommunications network and educational institutions. Recently Hanaro Telecom, Korea's second largest telecommunications carrier, deployed the Force10 E-Series in a countrywide backbone network upgrade to 10 Gigabit Ethernet. To direct operations in Korea, the world's most advanced telecommunications market, Force10 named Howard Lee country manager. In China, Tsinghua University and Shenzhen University City also deployed the E-Series to build 10 Gigabit Ethernet campus networks. To meet a growing need among commercial organizations and educational institutions for a compact and cost-effective 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch/router, Force10 introduced its E300 last quarter. As the newest addition to the E-Series, the E300 delivers the same performance and reliability as the E600 and E1200. Built-in redundancy simplifies network topology, management and troubleshooting while line-rate Gigabit and 10 Gigabit throughput, regardless of traffic conditions, enables predictable and resilient application performance. In support of its expanding worldwide operations, Force10 added two key executives to its management team. Bahman Sohrabi was named vice president of global services and is tasked with ensuring that Force10's customers receive the highest level of support. Force10 also named Andrew Feldman vice president of marketing, responsible for leading worldwide marketing and product management. Standardized in 2002, 10 Gigabit Ethernet is now moving from a technology deployed by research institutions to one that is a cost-effective option in data centers and large commercial organizations. According to the Dell'Oro Group, the 10 Gigabit Ethernet market will grow from $100 million in 2003, to $1.2 billion in 2006, as 10 Gigabit Ethernet becomes the high performance networking technology.