McDATA Appoints Young-bo Lee as Korea Country Manager

    Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

    BROOMFIELD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 15, 2005--McDATA Corporation (Nasdaq: MCDTA)(Nasdaq: MCDT), a leading provider of storage networking solutions, today announced the appointment of Young-bo Lee as country manager of McDATA Korea. Lee will be responsible for increasing McDATA's business in the local market, leading the emergent Korean sales team and managing McDATA's growing Asia-Pacific operations in Korea.
    "Korea is a very strategic business region in Asia, and the appointment of Young-bo Lee to country manager is a direct response to the growing market. We are extremely pleased with the addition of Lee to the McDATA team, as his storage networking experience and expertise will provide exemplary direction and support for the Korean sales team," said Paul Rath, Asia-Pacific vice-president of McDATA. "Leveraging Lee's leadership, McDATA can strengthen and deliver Global Enterprise Data Center strategies for Korean customers."
    According to studies from IDC on Asia-Pacific Fibre Channel (FC) switch factory revenue, FC switch sales are expected to grow from $166 million in 2004 to $338 million in 2008. To accommodate this demand, McDATA will continue to grow its Asia-Pacific teams and deliver tiered storage networking for a Global Enterprise Data Center (GEDC), where customer's networks transparently deliver access to business information any time, anywhere.
    "McDATA is a strong company that continues to demonstrate its thought leadership with innovative technologies, visionary strategies and a best-in-class solution portfolio, such as its recently launched Intrepid i10K, the industry's first and only backbone director," said Lee. "I will make every effort to realize McDATA's vision in the local market based on the advanced products and services for the Global Enterprise Data Center."

    About Young-bo Lee

    Lee is well acquainted with the local storage market and storage networking industry, bringing more than 20 years of experience in information technology, sales and marketing experience. Before joining the McDATA team, Young-bo Lee worked for four years at EMC Korea's Partner Division, where he was responsible for managing local partners and external collaborative affairs. Prior to EMC, Lee gained experience a Daelim, Digital Equipment Korea and Silicon Graphics Korea.

    About McDATA (www.mcdata.com)

    McDATA (Nasdaq: MCDTA)(Nasdaq: MCDT) is the only vendor today uniquely positioned to deliver a unified information infrastructure -- key to enabling a world where digital data is instantly transformed into useful information, accessed -- anytime, anywhere. With more than 20 years of storage networking experience, McDATA's comprehensive product portfolio enables partners and customers around the world to reduce the total cost of storage management today and be ready to adapt to the real-time information demands of tomorrow. Trusted in the world's largest data centers, McDATA connects more than two-thirds of all the world's networked data, powering the latest e-business applications, customer databases, financial traffic and other mission-critical data.

    Forward-Looking Statements

    This press release contains statements about expected future events that are forward-looking and subject to risks and uncertainties. Readers are urged to consider statements that include the terms "believes," "belief," "expects," "plans," "objectives," "estimates," "anticipates," "intends," "targets," or the like to be uncertain and forward-looking. Factors that could cause actual results to differ and vary materially from expectations include, but are not limited to, our relationships with EMC, IBM and HDS and the level of their orders, aggressive price competition by numerous other SAN and IP switch suppliers, OEM qualification of our new products, manufacturing constraints and other risk factors that are disclosed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These cautionary statements by us should not be construed as exhaustive or as any admission regarding the adequacy of disclosures made by us. All cautionary statements should be read as being applicable to all forward-looking statements wherever they appear. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

--30--SL/dx*

CONTACT: McDATA Corporation Media: Jil Backstrom, 720-558-4774 press.release@mcdata.com or Investors: Renee Lyall, 720-558-4629 renee.lyall@mcdata.com

KEYWORD: COLORADO SOUTH KOREA GERMANY INTERNATIONAL ASIA PACIFIC EUROPE Technology_IT INDUSTRY KEYWORD: NETWORKING HARDWARE SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT CHANGES SOURCE: McDATA Corporation

Copyright Business Wire 2005