JNI, Nishan form alliance to advance SoIP technology

SAN DIEGO and SAN JOSE, Calif. — JNI Corporation and Nishan Systems today announced a broad strategic agreement between the two companies.

The agreement covers joint research, development and marketing opportunities for the integration of Storage over Internet Protocol (SoIP), including iSCSI, solutions with Fibre Channel-based Storage Area Networks (SANs) in Metropolitan Area and Wide Area Networks (MANs and WANs).

The agreement also covers the ongoing development and deployment of JNI and Nishan Systems products. JNI products include FibreStar brand Fibre Channel host bus adapters, EZ Fibre management and utility software and DriverSuite software drivers.

Nishan Systems offers a complete end-to-end SAN solution integrating proven industry network protocols, such as IP, Gigabit Ethernet, OSPF, MPLS, LDAP, and SNMP, as well as storage network protocols, such as Fibre Channel and SCSI.

Nearly all SANs built today use Fibre Channel technology, which is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for connecting servers and external storage devices in a building or campus environment. Year 2000 SAN revenue is currently $4.7 billion, estimated to grow to $7.4 billion by 2001.

However, because Fibre Channel has a 10-kilometer distance limitation, JNI and Nishan Systems see deployment of an FC/SoIP solution as the ideal answer for linking a customer's SANs across regional, national or global operations. Using an Internet Protocol-based solution advocated by JNI and Nishan, customers can link SANs using existing public and private IP infrastructure that already is deployed across the globe.

"JNI as an industry leader is also one of the most progressive companies in understanding the cooperative role of Fibre Channel and Storage over IP technology in today's enterprise," said Aamer Latif, president and chief executive officer of Nishan Systems. "JNI is serving the channel through solutions integrators, putting them close to customers that are deploying enterprise-level storage network solutions today. Through Nishan's alliance with JNI, these customers will be the first to see the benefit of a cooperative FC/SoIP solution for creating true enterprise storage networks in an open environment."

"Nishan Systems has pioneered the concept of integrating existing storage networks into MANs and WANs using the SoIP architectural framework," said Neal Waddington, president and CEO of JNI Corporation. "They have done more than any company to develop and promote open standards under the umbrella of SoIP technology, assuring all such products will be developed to open standards and be interoperable with others."

"JNI also sees a practical benefit to its enterprise customer base, as IT managers look beyond simply building SANs, but also in integrating their SANs together, much as ‘islands of LANs' were integrated through wide-area networks during the 1990s," Waddington said.

The agreement outlines a number of joint activities, including:

• Interoperability Testing: JNI and Nishan Systems will work together at the product development level to assure the companies' products offer seamless interoperability for OEMs and storage network customers;
  
• Joint Solution Opportunities: JNI and Nishan will cooperate to develop solutions for enterprise-level installations integrating Fibre Channel and SoIP technology in the most efficient storage network configuration, leveraging the strengths of each technology.
  
• Solution Certification: Both companies will develop test suites and develop pre-defined solutions to assure FC/SoIP solution deployments will function seamlessly in the enterprise.
  
• Technology Exchange and Joint Development Efforts: Nishan and JNI will share relevant technologies that will facilitate the development of current and future products to be more closely linked for future enterprise deployment.
  
• Joint Marketing Cooperation: Nishan and JNI agree to cooperate in future marketing initiative jointly identified by the companies promoting the FC/SoIP concept and subsequent developments between the two firms.

"As SANs evolve and expand, customers will want to use the strengths of Fibre Channel and existing IP networks," said Robert Gray, senior analyst, IDC. "Partnerships such as JNI's and Nishan's will help link a company's SANs together into a large, shared storage environment that will benefit the customers, as well as Nishan and JNI."

About Nishan Systems
Nishan Systems storage networking products are based on IP and Ethernet, the worldwide networking standards. Long-thought impossible, Storage over IP (SoIP) is a broad-based revolution, led by Nishan, to use the ubiquitous Internet Protocol (IP) and Gigabit Ethernet to rapidly transfer large blocks of data between servers and storage devices. The highly reliable and manageable SoIP SAN fabric extends seamlessly from the data center to the metro area and beyond.

And perhaps most significant, Nishan's SoIP products are fully compatible with the millions of LAN, MAN, and WAN routers and switches already installed and mastered by IT professionals. Nishan Systems, a full voting member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), is based in San Jose, California, and can be reached at www.NishanSystems.com, and at 408-519-3700.

About JNI Corporation
JNI Corporation is one of the leading manufacturers of enterprise-level storage area network (SAN) products and the leading provider of Fibre Channel-based host bus adapters (HBAs) for Solaris servers. JNI offers a broad line of FibreStar HBAs, Emerald ASICs, and DriverSuite and EZ Fibre software for storage area networks. JNI's PCI products operate on Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows NT, HP-UX, AIX, Novell, Linux and Mac OS systems.

JNI's SBus products run on Solaris. Customers include Amdahl, Avid, Chaparral, Compaq StorageWorks, Consan, EMC, Eurologic, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, LSI Logic, McData, StorageTek and Sun Microsystems. Company headquarters are in San Diego, with offices throughout the U.S. and Munich (München), Germany. www.jni.com.