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(MCDT) McDATA Holds Annual Shareholder Meeting; Shareholders Elect Directors, Ratify Auditors and Approve Amended Equity Incentive Plan

Posted on: Wednesday, 27 August 2003, 06:00 CDT

BROOMFIELD, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 27, 2003--McDATA(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: MCDTA/MCDT) today held its annual shareholder meeting. After a vote, McDATA's shareholders approved the following:

-- Charles C. Johnston, John F. McDonnell and Laurence G. Walker,

as Class III Directors for additional three-year terms;

-- Appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as its independent

auditor for the fiscal year 2003, which ends January 31, 2004;

and

-- Amendments to McDATA's Equity Incentive Plan.

During the meeting, John Kelley, President & CEO, provided a brief overview of the company, including McDATA's 2002 accomplishments, a recap of the recently announced strategic transactions and the company's vision. Among many milestones achieved during the past year, McDATA:

-- Announced the planned acquisition of Nishan Systems, a

privately held company that is the world's first supplier of

native IP storage solutions and Sanera Systems, a privately

held company that provides highly scalable and reliable

enterprise storage networking solutions. These transactions

bring together best-of-breed solutions seamlessly under one

brand - McDATA.

-- Signed a supply agreement with and made an investment in

Aarohi Communications, a privately held company that provides

system-on-a-chip solutions for the storage networking market.

Aarohi will provide its FabricStream(TM) technology for

McDATA's intelligent switch platforms.

-- Launched new products within our Sphereon(TM) line of Fabric

Switches, Intrepid(TM) 6000 Series Directors and

SANavigator(R) management software, building upon our position

as the expert provider of multi-capable storage networking

solutions.

-- Expanded our distribution channels to include new OEM/reseller

partner Dell, in addition to EMC, IBM, Hitachi Data Systems

and Hewlett-Packard. McDATA also added StorageTek and Sun

Microsystems in early 2003.

-- Implemented several key elements of our multi-phased

outsourced manufacturing model, which resulted in more

reliable manufacturing processes and substantially reduced

inventory levels.

-- Strengthened McDATA's management team with the addition of new

leadership in sales and service, marketing, software,

engineering and finance.

-- Sharpened our focus on the customer, strengthened brand

recognition and increased awareness of McDATA through enhanced

marketing initiatives.

During the past year, McDATA continued to expand its technology leadership. In the fourth quarter of 2002, McDATA raised the bar in the industry when it unveiled its multi-capable Intrepid(TM) 6140 Directors and its Sphereon(TM) 4500 FlexPort Fabric Switches, both built on McDATA's common Extendable Open Network (EON)(TM) Architecture. McDATA recently demonstrated its next-generation intelligent platform, due out in 2004, which will allow customers to optimize their storage asset utilization via advanced volume management and data movement capabilities.

"Over the last twenty years, we've established a reputation for meeting our customers' storage needs with the best storage networking solutions in the industry, and we've continued to build on this legacy with a lasting commitment to business integrity, market innovation and customer success," said John Kelley, McDATA's president and chief executive officer. "Today, we estimate that McDATA products and solutions connect up to two-thirds of the data in storage area network (SAN) environments and ten percent of all business data throughout the world."

"Our customers view us as the expert provider of multi-capable storage networking solutions - hardware, software and services combined to enable our partners and customers to network the world's business data," added Kelley. "With our recent strategic announcements, we have changed the future of storage networking. We are committed to providing complete end-to-end storage networking solutions with the best-of-breed product and solutions portfolio in the industry."

About McDATA (www.mcdata.com)

McDATA (Nasdaq: MCDTA/MCDT) is the expert provider of Multi-Capable Storage Networking Solutions(TM) - hardware, software and services - that enable 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. Entrenched in over 8,000 data centers worldwide, McDATA solutions are at the heart of more than 80 percent of Fortune 100 storage network data centers, powering the latest e-business applications, customer databases, financial traffic and other mission-critical data. Customers leverage McDATA's multi-capable solutions to realize immediate cost savings, reduce their investment risk, ensure the continuity of their operations and adapt to changing business requirements.

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 ability to ramp SANavigator sales, our relationships with EMC Corporation and IBM and the level of their orders, the impact of the continued general economic slowdown on purchasing decisions by customers and capital spending, our ability to expand sales into higher margin channels through system integrators and distributors, a loss of any of our key customers (or our OEMs' key customers), distributors, resellers or our contract manufacturers, our ability to expand our product offerings and any transition to new products, (such as higher port count and multi-protocol products) integrate recent acquisitions and OEM qualification of such new products which may occur after the general availability dates, possible inventory charges that may occur with any transition to such new products, component quality and availability, the development of the storage area network and switch markets, competition in the storage area network and switch markets, aggressive pricing and product give-aways by competitors, one-time events and other important risk factors disclosed previously and from time to time in our filings at the U.S. 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. We cannot always predict or determine after the fact what factors would cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements or other statements. 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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