BROCADE SILKWORM FABRIC APPLICATION PLATFORM RAPIDLY EMBRACED BY STORAGE SOFTWARE COMPANIES

Storage Networking Leader Releases Software Developer’s Kit for Next-Generation Fabric Applications

SAN JOSE, Calif.—March 3, 2003—Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. (Brocade®) (Nasdaq:
BRCD), the world’s leading provider of infrastructure solutions for Storage Area Networks (SANs), announced today that seven storage management companies, including Alacritus Software, CommVault Systems, FalconStor Software, Incipient, Inc., InterSAN, Inc., StoreAge Networking Technologies, Inc., and Topio have selected the Brocade SilkWorm® Fabric Application Platform on which to design new, fabric-based storage management software, demonstrating the rapidly growing industry support for fabric applications. They join HP, who last month announced with Brocade an industry-first joint development agreement to deploy HP VersaStor technology within the SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform, enabling new levels of scalability and performance of its storage virtualization technology. Public demonstrations of many of these applications are being staged at the Brocade Conference 2003 in LasVegas, Nevada, March 31 to April 2.

Announced last month, the SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform is the industry’s first open, intelligent platform for fabric applications, allowing customers to gain new simpler and more efficient ways to manage their server and storage environments through the availability of intelligent, fabric-based applications from their OEM and application partners of choice. The platform is designed to host fabricbased applications such as data movement, volume management, and data management. By simply adding a new SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform switch to an existing Brocade SAN fabric, customers gain next-generation storage and data management capabilities with the assurance of compatibility with thousands of existing Brocade SANs across the world. “As storage environments dramatically scale in size and become increasingly heterogeneous, simplifying storage management is a leading requirement for customers. With continued advances in open systems storage virtualization and intelligent SAN platforms for storage management application development, it is now possible to address this requirement with solutions that utilize intelligence embedded in the storage fabric,” said John Webster, Senior Analyst and Founder, Data Mobility Group.

COMPANIES SIGN ON TO DELIVER APPLICATIONS FOR FABRIC APPLICATION PLATFORM

Today Brocade also made available a Software Developer’s Kit (SDK) for the Fabric Application Platform. The developer’s kit is open to qualified software providers and will help accelerate time to market in the emerging area of fabric applications. Developers unlock the intelligence in the application platform through the new Xpath™ application-level API and services, which support a broad range of block storage capabilities--including virtual disk, virtual tape, copy-on-write snapshots, n-way mirroring, and online data migration--providing application
developers a simplified and accelerated development environment.

“Brocade has taken a leadership role in expanding intelligence in the fabric, delivering a common set of advanced fabric services that make it easier for our OEM and application partners to unlock this intelligence and deliver advanced features to their end customers,” said Michael Klayko, Brocade Vice President and Division Manager, SilkWorm Fabric Application Platform. “Our teamwork with our Fabric Application Platform Partners will help significantly extend the functionality, simplify the management, and reduce the operational cost and complexity of managing and administering enterprise storage environments.”

The new Fabric Application Platform Partners join the more than forty Brocade Fabric Access Partners already developing to Brocade SAN infrastructure and unlocking the intelligence in the fabric through the Brocade Fabric Access API. Leading SAN management vendors are shipping products today that are optimized to manage existing Brocade SAN fabrics. Storage management and fabric management vendors use the Brocade XPath and Fabric Access APIs to deliver the unique features resident in the Brocade intelligent fabric to customers through their applications.

About Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.

Brocade (Nasdaq: BRCD) offers the industry’s leading intelligent platform for networking storage. The
world’s leading systems, applications, and storage vendors have selected Brocade to provide a networking
foundation for their SAN solutions. The Brocade SilkWorm® family of fabric switches and software is
designed to optimize data availability and storage and server resources in the enterprise. Using Brocade
solutions, companies can simplify the implementation of storage area networks, reduce the total cost of
ownership of data storage environments, and improve network and application efficiency. For more
information, visit the Brocade website at www.brocade.com or contact the company at info@brocade.com.

Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
1745 Technology Dr. San Jose, CA 95110
T 408.487.8000 F 408.487.8101