Finisar Introduces NetWisdom 2.0 -- Dashboard-Based Real-Time Performance Monitoring & Analysis Solution for Enterprise Storage Area Networks (SANs)

SUNNYVALE, CA, Nov. 09, 2004 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Finisar Corporation (NASDAQ: FNSR), a provider of a wide range of gigabit network solutions, today introduced NetWisdom 2.0, the company's next generation monitoring solution for Enterprise storage area networks (SANs).

NetWisdom is a dashboard-based, real-time performance monitoring and analysis solution that allows enterprises to quickly view the performance of their entire SAN fabric. SAN outages and downtime cost companies from tens of thousands to millions of dollars a minute. Badly performing SANs slow down operations and undercut the ROI of the entire IT infrastructure. Finisar's NetWisdom monitors all vital functions and reports on the health and performance of your entire SAN fabric, proactively alerting you to issues before they impact application availability. Policy-based alerts and notifications can be defined to best support network management and availability. Finisar solutions are totally vendor agnostic and monitor all the components in the entire fabric regardless of manufacturer. By providing a single, intuitive GUI to monitor and manage multi-vendor devices, Finisar simplifies SAN administration and reduces costs.

"Everything used to be the SAN's fault. NetWisdom allows us to turn our storage service around from being reactive to proactive. NetWisdom pays for itself multiple times every day. It has been a powerful and vital addition to our SAN infrastructure," said Simon Close -- SAN Administrator, Halifax Bank of Scotland one of the UK's Largest Mortgage Lending Institutions.

"Finisar's NetWisdom provides us a very detailed assessment of our storage area network environment by conducting real-time end-to-end monitoring and analysis of our SAN," said Spencer Soohoo, chief technical officer (CTO) at Cedars-Sinai. "In addition, NetWisdom's reporting and alerting capabilities are key features because they enable us to proactively deal with potential problem areas. NetWisdom provides us a quality solution for cost-effectively ensuring our SAN performance and uptime through early detection of hidden errors at great levels of detail."

The SAN has become an increasingly important part of the enterprise IT infrastructure and the building block of mission-critical business applications. With a pedigree of excellence from the SAN research and development marketplace, Finisar was named the "2004 Market Leader in Fibre Channel Test and Measurement by Frost and Sullivan." Its latest NetWisdom solution provides CIOs and SAN Managers with the ability to easily define service level agreements and clearly and accurately define what users should expect for their SAN performance. Performance monitoring helps to further increase operational efficiency by quickly pinpointing problems and accurately predicting capacity needs.

NetWisdom Solutions Provide the Following Enterprise User Benefits

-- Dashboard display provides snapshot view of entire SAN fabric
performance at a glance.
-- Customizable views and different color displays highlight when
network activity changes. Allows user to identify the following:
-- Top host talkers, top links, queue depths, most active drives,
slowest drives
-- Alarms, errors & traffic speedometers
-- Early detection of device degradation, bottlenecks & errors
minimizes costly downtime
-- Proactive performance tuning & capacity planning maximizes ROI
-- Real-Time, accurate accounting of bandwidth utilization tracks
service level agreements
-- Vendor independent-works with all fibre channel devices &
manufacturers - no need to purchase other solutions
-- Alarm notifications & alerts reduce time, money & effort needed
to resolve errors
-- Secure access restricts those that aren't authorized -
keeps data safe
-- SNMP trap alarm action lets users leverage their existing
management software (HP OpenView, HP Node Manager, etc)
-- Software and/or hardware options for probing the network, allowing
users to customize their implementation according to precise
requirements
-- Integration with Finisar's award-winning Xgig solution for
determining the root cause of problems and ensuring rapid problem
escalation and resolution

"As the recipient of the 2004 Market Leadership award for Fibre Channel (FC) testing, Finisar is a major player in practically every vendor's engineering lab. Finisar is currently extending its reach into other avenues as well. Finisar provides cost-effective solutions for users that have need of root cause analysis of SAN problems and bottlenecks," said Jessy Cavazos, Industry Analyst and Sector Leader of the Communication Test Sector at Frost & Sullivan.

"With NetWisdom, individuals responsible for managing the Storage Area Network now have a deep insight into how their SAN is functioning," said Kevin Cornell, Sr. Vice President, General Manager Network Tools Division, Finisar. "If there is a problem with the SAN causing performance or availability issues, we can isolate the problem and even show how to resolve it. If a problem occurs in the infrastructure while SAN is functioning properly, we can eliminate the SAN as the cause."

Pricing and Availability
Gillaspy Associates solutions are currently shipping to leading-edge customers. Register on our website for a demonstration

For more detailed information, product configurations and pricing please contact Gillaspy Associates at 805-386-0700 and on the Internet

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NetWisdom
SAN Performance monitoring tool that helps ensure SAN health & uptime

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