Business News

Brocade to Acquire Strategic Business Systems

Wednesday 05. March 2008 - Acquisition Will Expand Brocade Professional Services Offerings for Evolving Data Centers

Brocade(R) (NASDAQ:BRCD), the leading provider of data center networking solutions that help enterprises connect and manage their information, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Strategic Business Systems (SBS), a privately held provider of IT professional services for medium-size and large enterprises in both the commercial and federal government sectors.

Founded in 2000, and headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, SBS is a leading provider of data center-focused professional services and has established partnerships with many of the industry’s largest providers of IT systems. SBS has a team of skilled consultants who provide technical expertise across a wide range of professional services practices, including storage, servers, security, networking, and virtualization services that address the requirements of enterprise data centers.

“The data center is evolving at unprecedented rates and customers are asking us to provide more services that solve real-world business challenges. SBS’s team of skilled professionals and comprehensive portfolio of service methodologies will enable us to offer an expanded line of services that address the challenges of our customers’ rapidly evolving data centers,” said Michael Klayko, Brocade CEO.

The SBS services complement the existing portfolio of Brocade professional services offerings, including:

— Data Center Fabric Infrastructure: Enables business agility and growth
by providing a robust and flexible data management infrastructure

— Virtualization: Provides cost-effective, flexible, and efficient use of
IT infrastructure across the data center

— Data Protection/Security: Helps ensure that data is safe and highly
available to meet both business and compliance objectives

— Data Migration: Supports reliable data movement to make sure data is
available wherever and whenever it is needed




“The data center is undergoing a fundamental change, and customers are increasingly looking for outside help to manage this transformation,” said Doug Chandler, Research Director at IDC. “Brocade’s acquisition of SBS is consistent with its goal of building an end-to-end services portfolio.”

The acquisition of SBS is expected to close in the second quarter of Brocade’s Fiscal Year 2008. Following the close, SBS will be managed as a wholly owned subsidiary within the Brocade Services, Support, and Solutions Division under the leadership of Brocade Vice President and General Manager Hugues Meyrath.