Agreement expands the companies’ relationship to promote Managed Evolution for System z.

Boulder, Colo. — December 16, 2008 — Optica Technologies (“Optica”) announced today that it has executed a sales referral agreement with Brocade Communications Systems (“Brocade”). This agreement formalizes an existing marketing alliance between the companies under which they are collaborating with IBM to promote the industry’s first infrastructure-centric investment protection methodology, Managed Evolution for System z (“Managed Evolution”). The Managed Evolution solution aligns with IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center and Green IT Leadership initiatives, and aims to promote long-term economic value via System z migrations and streamlining operations.

To implement Managed Evolution, Optica’s exclusive FICON to ESCON Converter (“Prizm”) is installed in combination with Brocade DCX Backbone, which enables customers to deploy a single, unified FICON infrastructure on System z while maintaining attachment of select ESCON devices required to support mission-critical applications. The combined solution is equally effective when deployed locally or over extended distances via a cascaded fabric using FICON inter-switch links, or a Brocade IP-based FICON channel extension platform.

Managed Evolution brings the mainframe community its first structured methodology to facilitate an orderly protocol migration (from ESCON to FICON) across the customer’s chosen time horizon. This ability to migrate gracefully is growing in importance as ESCON-based infrastructures are increasingly expensive to maintain and manage, and are approaching End-of-Life and/or End-of-Support status.

Following Managed Evolution practices, System z customers are able to eliminate the costs and inefficiencies of managing dual host infrastructures and leverage all of the inherent advantages of FICON. A single, unified FICON host infrastructure provides a simplified cabling infrastructure, streamlined host configuration management, and superior flexibility relative to performance, distance support and new workload readiness.

The modest number of worldwide mainframe sites belies the relative importance of this platform where over 70% of mission-critical data resides. For example, the top 50 worldwide banks¹ and 22 of the top 25 U.S. retailers² run IBM System z. Today, the mainframe market is vibrant and growing, and demand for the cost-effective, secure and energy-efficient computing provided by the mainframe has driven recent double-digit sales growth. While the majority of new mainframe-based workload is deployed on FICON technology, the installed base includes several million ESCON connections that support stable, mission-critical business applications.

“With decades of experience in designing, deploying and managing mainframe infrastructure solutions, Brocade continues to deliver industry-leading technologies such as the Brocade DCX Backbone, directors, switches and channel extension platforms to help System z customers build flexible, scalable and high performance solutions for improved data access and protection,” said Brian Larsen, Worldwide Business Manager for System z Infrastructure, Brocade. ” By teaming with Optica, and qualifying the Prizm solutions for local and remote FICON-to-ESCON conversion, we can help customers protect their investments while providing a path to a high-performance FICON infrastructure.”

Michael Dailey, Vice President of Worldwide Sales for Optica, said, “Brocade’s footprint in mainframe data centers is extensive. When you combine their market leadership and enthusiastic commitment to Managed Evolution for System z, Brocade is ideally positioned to help customers optimize System z investments. We look forward to taking our relationship to the next level.”

About Optica Technologies
Optica is headquartered in Louisville, Colorado with sales and support offices in Ohio, Minnesota, Texas, New York and London. The company has been developing, producing and marketing high-quality computer connectivity and security solutions since 1967 and is a recognized leader in the mainframe market. For more information, please visit us at www.opticatech.com.

Optica Media Contact:
Zac Fisher
Zac.Fisher@opticatech.com (800) 953-4773

Optica is a trademark of Optica Technologies Incorporated. FICON® and ESCON® are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation.

¹ source: top WW Banks as identified by the Fortune Global 500 in 2006, IBM client list cross-referenced.
² source: top U.S. Retailers as identified by National Retail Federation, IBM client list cross-referenced.