BLADE Network Technologies and NetXen Team Up to Equip Blade Servers With Industry’s First 10 Gigabit Ethernet Solution

IBM BladeCenter With Native 10 Gigabit Ethernet Made Possible by Blade.org Collaboration

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - 16 Feb 2007: Blade.org Summit on Innovation & Entrepreneurship -- BLADE Network Technologies Inc. (BLADE), the leading provider of network switching infrastructure for blade servers, and NetXen, a leading provider of breakthrough 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) technology and products, announced that they have teamed up through Blade.org to deliver the industry’s first solution offering 10GE connectivity for blade servers. BLADE, NetXen and other members of the Blade.org open community, dedicated to creating solutions based on the blade server platform pioneered by IBM and Intel, celebrated the organization’s first anniversary of blade innovation today.

BLADE and NetXen collaborated with IBM BladeCenter to develop the breakthrough 10GE technology, which addresses the expected strong demand for 10GE blade servers for virtualization and server consolidation, High Performance Computing workloads, and bandwidth-intensive applications such as IPTV, Web 2.0 and massively multiplayer online gaming. The BLADE-NetXen solution includes BLADE’s Nortel 10Gb Ethernet Switch Module (10GbESM) and the NetXen 10G Ethernet Expansion Card. The solution offers breakthrough 10GE pricing of less than $550 per port that is significantly less than other vendors’ offerings.

The BLADE 10GE switch provides 20 10GE ports -- 14 ports internal to the chassis and six external ports for connection to the network. The BLADE switch is used with IBM BladeCenter in conjunction with a new dual-port 10GE expansion card from NetXen that can support multi-protocol offload. The BLADE-NetXen solution improves throughput, reduces host CPU utilization to boost system performance and enables a converged network fabric consisting of data and storage.
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“Working with NetXen and other Blade.org members has enabled us to innovate and create products on the cutting edge,” said Shailesh Naik, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for BLADE Network Technologies and a member of Blade.org’s Board of Directors. “Together, we offer our enterprise customers integrated solutions that extend the market for blade systems into hot new areas like VoIP, IPTV, gaming and security.”

“Our collaboration with BLADE Network Technologies to deliver the blade server industry’s first native 10-Gigabit Ethernet solution is an important milestone,” said Dave Pulling, President of NetXen. “Working together through Blade.org, we have brought to market an end-to-end solution at breakthrough pricing. We are taking datacenter performance and affordability to the next level for enterprise customers and paving the way for mainstream adoption of 10GE blade systems.”

The BLADE Nortel 10Gb Ethernet Switch Module is $9,799 and the NetXen 10G Ethernet Expansion Card is $899. Both are available today from IBM.

About NetXen, Inc.

NetXen, Inc. is a privately held company that manufactures intelligent 10-Gigabit Ethernet networking chips that advance enterprise datacenter performance and agility. Founded in February 2002 by chip design veteran Govind Kizhepat, the company is headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., with an office in Pune, India. NetXen’s protocol- and OS-agnostic Intelligent NICs are designed for volume 10-Gigabit deployments and are targeted at server, storage, security and networking systems.

About BLADE Network Technologies

BLADE Network Technologies is the market-leading supplier of Ethernet, IP and Application Switches for blade server systems globally. BLADE is the first vendor to focus exclusively on serving the network infrastructure needs of the rapidly growing blade server market. The company’s end-users include Fortune 500 companies across 26 different industry segments. As the number-one supplier of network switches for blade servers, BLADE boasts an installed base of more than 100,000 blade server switches (representing approximately 2.1 million BLADE switch ports) around the world. In 2006, BLADE was established as a fully independent company when it purchased certain assets of Nortel’s Blade Server Switch Business Unit. For more information, visit BLADE at www.bladenetwork.net.

About Blade.Org

Blade.org is a collaborative organization and developer community focused on accelerating the expansion of blade solutions and the IBM and Intel blade ecosystem. The organization is intended to create new solutions, maximizing the value of the blade platform. More information is available at www.blade.org.

Contact Information

Cheryl Patstone

NetXen, Inc.

Contact via E-mail