Santa Clara, Calif., October 29, 2009 - BLADE Network Technologies Inc. (BLADE), the trusted leader in data centre networking, announced today that the company has been chosen as the exclusive global provider of Junos®-based Ethernet switches for blade servers.

BLADE's first blade server switches featuring the Junos operating system are slated for delivery in 2010. They will be co-branded and offered by BLADE to the world's major blade server OEMs under its existing multi-year OEM contracts. This will provide customers with an alternative to an all-Cisco software environment for an entire data centre network infrastructure - now including blade servers.

BLADE, which enjoys a market-leading - over 50 percent - share of the blade server switching market, will augment its popular BLADEOS network operating system based blade server switches with a Junos-based offering aimed at displacing Cisco from this important market segment. BLADEOS delivers pace-setting data centre and cloud-ready networking features as well as the best price/performance, lowest latency and lowest power consumption for 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.

BLADE will also offer its value-added data center features, such as network-aware VMready™ virtualization, AMP™ Active Multi Pathing technology, HotLinks™ for high availability, vNIC (Virtual Network Interface Card), OFM (Open Fabric Manager), Advanced OFM and other industry-leading Intellectual Property, on its new "Running Junos" blade server switches.

"BLADE is well aligned with Juniper Networks in our commitment to reduce the total cost of network ownership, while providing the high-performance, scalability and virtualization required by today's dynamic data centre environments," said David Yen, executive vice president and general manager, Fabric and Switching Technologies Business Group, Juniper Networks. "Juniper and BLADE are partnering to deliver and prove there is a viable market for innovation to emerge from best-in-class technologies such as Juniper's powerful network operating system and BLADE's market leader blade server switches. Together, Juniper and BLADE can better meet customers' needs for lossless, low-latency, low-power and cost-effective next-generation data centre networking."

"BLADE Network Technologies designs and delivers the world's most popular and widely deployed blade server switches," said Vikram Mehta, president and CEO, BLADE Network Technologies. "Today's announcement allows us to extend our franchise and serve those customers who want a common network operating system at all layers of their corporate network - access, aggregation and core. These customers previously had no choice and were required to turn to Cisco. This game-changing partnership provides customers with a very attractive alternative."

Mehta added, "We are also aggressively investing in R&D to enhance BLADEOS and enrich the portfolio of data centre extensions to this popular operating system. The company has invested over 12 years in hardening this OS and making it ideal for data centres. This network OS connects millions of devices in data centres around the world. BLADEOS will continue to remain a very central part of BLADE's strategy going forward. BLADE and its partners are committed to supporting and enhancing BLADEOS, while also offering customers a Junos-based networking solution."

"IDC believes major server OEMs such as IBM, HP, NEC, Dell and Fujitsu will embrace these types of products, blade server switches, as an alternative to other market options," said Eve Griliches, director at IDC. "This new strategic relationship between Juniper Networks and BLADE Network Technologies is well-timed to capitalise on the upheaval in the market created by dramatically changing business partner relationships."

BLADE has established an impressive series of industry firsts that will now include the first and only blade server switches to run Junos. Other BLADE firsts include:

• First to ship Layer 2-7 blade server switches
• First to ship 10G uplink blade server switches
• First to ship Server Connectivity Modules
• First to ship native 10 Gigabit Ethernet blade server switches, leading to a Frost and Sullivan Product Innovation Award
• First to break the under $500/port price for 10G Ethernet switches
• First and only vendor to deliver VMready 1,000 virtual port virtual machine-aware switches
• First to market with FCoE-Ready blade server switch
• First to ship Virtual Fabric Switches capable of carving up a 10G Ethernet pipe into multiple pipes of varying speeds
• First networking company to receive ‘AlwaysOn's Going Green 100' award
• First—and only—vendor to deliver 24-port 10G Ethernet switch at sub 300 ns port-to-port latency.

BLADE is the market share leader for blade server Ethernet switches with an installed-base of nearly 7 million data centre Ethernet ports. BLADE's switches offer a 5x price-performance advantage, 10x latency advantage, and greater than 60 percent lower power consumption advantage compared to offerings from Cisco, all while guaranteeing interoperability with existing network infrastructures.

About BLADE Network Technologies
BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE) is the leading provider of Gigabit and 10G Ethernet cloud-ready networking solutions for dynamic, enterprise data centers worldwide. In addition to its innovative OEM blade switches, and SmartConnect with VMready virtualization and BLADEHarmony Manager software, BLADE's "Virtual, Cooler, Easier" RackSwitch family enables "Rackonomics" - an efficient approach for scaling out data center networks to drive down total cost of ownership. BLADE's customers include more than 300 of the Fortune 500 across 26 industry segments, representing nearly 7 million switch ports connecting over 2 million servers and storage systems in data centers around the globe. Visit: www.bladenetwork.net. Twitter: @BLADENetwork.

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BLADE Network Technologies, the BLADE logo, BLADEHarmony, RackSwitch, RackSwitch Solution Partner, SmartConnect and VMready are trademarks of BLADE Network Technologies. Juniper Networks and Junos are registered trademarks of Juniper Networks, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks and copyrights are owned by their respective owners.

Contacts:
Maxine Bingham
BLADE Network Technologies
(408) 806-5028
press@bladenetwork.net

Sara Collinge/Nigel Parker
Strategic PR
+44 (0) 1494 434434
sarac@strategicpr.net / nigelp@strategicpr.net