McDATA Strengthens Channel Commitment, Appoints Carol Giles Neslund to

McDATA Strengthens Channel Commitment, Appoints Carol Giles Neslund to Vice President of OEM Sales

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    BROOMFIELD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 9, 2005--McDATA Corporation (Nasdaq:MCDTA) (Nasdaq:MCDT), the leading provider of storage networking solutions, today announced the appointment of Carol Giles Neslund to vice president of OEM sales. As the leader of the OEM team, Neslund's focus will be on increasing McDATA's market presence and revenue potential by leveraging and growing its OEM channel partnerships.
    "Carol's appointment solidifies McDATA's commitment to its OEM partners so they can continue to grow and deliver McDATA's best-in-class products and tiered storage networks to customers," said Gary Gysin, senior vice president of worldwide sales and services. "Carol's extensive experience in high technology, sales development and marketing will prove to be very valuable as we expand our sales channels."
    McDATA solutions are key enablers of tiered storage networking for a Global Enterprise Data Center (GEDC), where customers' networks transparently deliver access to business information any time, anywhere. The GEDC is a global data network that connects and consolidates resources around the globe, is centrally managed, delivers security for enterprise data and provides customers greater flexibility. It is a dynamic, adaptive network that can change on the fly to meet fast-changing needs. With McDATA's industry expertise, breadth of product offering and future technology strategy, McDATA is uniquely able to deliver on this vision.

    About Carol Giles Neslund

    Neslund brings more than 20 years of experience developing and leading successful sales and marketing teams in the high-technology industry. Prior to McDATA, Neslund was a consultant at the Business Leadership Institute. She has also served as the Director of Sales for the Western Region at StorageTek, where her primary responsibilities included leading the direct sales organization, implementing a new sales coverage model to drive increased revenue, and participating in the development of a corporate wide sales management process. Carol has also worked for McDATA OEM partners IBM and Hitachi Data Systems.

    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.

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CONTACT: McDATA Corporation Media: Jil Backstrom, 720-558-4774 303-913-1650 (cell) press.release@mcdata.com or Investors: Renee Lyall, 720-558-4629 renee.lyall@mcdata.com

KEYWORD: COLORADO Technology_IT INDUSTRY KEYWORD: HARDWARE SOFTWARE NETWORKING MANAGEMENT CHANGES PHOTO PHOTOWIRE SOURCE: McDATA Corporation PHOTO: 39148

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