Frost & Sullivan Recognizes Finisar Corporation as Top Fibre Channel Test Equipment Vendor

PALO ALTO, Calif., Apr 19, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Frost & Sullivan has named Finisar Corporation as the recipient of the 2004 Frost & Sullivan Award for Market Leadership in the fibre channel test equipment market. In a recent analysis, "World Test & Measurement Opportunity Analysis for Emerging Technologies," Frost & Sullivan recognized Finisar Corporation's market share domination of the fibre channel tester (FCT) market.

In its analysis, Frost & Sullivan commended Finisar's strategic initiatives in responding to tough market conditions. Faced with the communication industry's downturn and the reduced profitability of service providers and equipment manufacturers, Finisar focused on new growth areas by targeting the emerging FCT markets. The company's strong commitment to new product development is reflected in the innovative solutions it introduced to meet the altered needs of customers.

According to Sankar Prakash, analyst for Frost & Sullivan's Communication Test Practice, "With a commanding market share in the fibre channel test arena, to say that Finisar dominated the market in 2003 would clearly be an understatement. Finisar truly espouses the cause of market leadership through its consistent product innovation efforts and innovative marketing strategies. With the introduction of new test products in the 4 and 10 Gigabyte ranges, Finisar's XGIG product line has become truly comprehensive, providing a vast range of testing solutions to equipment manufacturers and service providers in the fibre channel arena. Going forward, Finisar's enhanced product portfolio is expected to cater to the Storage Area Network (SAN) -- Fibre Channel Tester (FCT) market migration from 2 to 4 Gigabytes and beyond. This is likely to secure the company's market position in the industry in the future."

Finisar was also able to keep extending its product line despite the slowdown in the communications industry because of its wealth of experience and keen market insights. The company entered the storage area network (SAN) deployment market two years ago and later entered the local area network (LAN) market to provide more comprehensive solutions to SAN deployment customers.

Finisar was recognized for its consistent product innovation efforts and innovative marketing strategies that led to gain valuable market share. Every year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has gained a major share of the market through implementation of superior, market-leading strategies. Finisar's wide-ranging XGIG product line comprises fibre channel analyzers that currently operate in the 1 and 2 Gigabit range and jammers that are essentially error injectors used for testing fibre channel networks.

With Finisar's recent introduction of the industry's first analysis solutions for 4 Gigabit and 10 Gigabit fibre channel range, the XGIG product family is truly comprehensive, providing a vast range of testing solutions for the fibre channel arena. The extended line caters to the SAN-FCT market migration from 2 GIG to 4 GIG and beyond.

The company's broad portfolio also includes NetWisdom, a product that caters to higher-level SAN monitoring. This product is equipped with features such as low-level data indulgence and problem identification capacity, giving it a critical advantage over competing products.

Finisar maintains a close working relationship with R&D labs, manufacturers' engineering departments, and installation and monitoring service providers right through the entire product cycle from development to manufacturing to delivery. In this way, it is able to help its customers make their products more cost effective.

Finisar seems set to continue consolidating its leadership position in the rapidly growing FCT market. As SAN deployment increases across numerous verticals such as finance, telecom and healthcare, fibre channel technology is likely to gain importance.

"Increasing SAN deployment is likely to boost the FCT market," says Prakash. "Going forward, Frost & Sullivan expects the market leader, Finisar Corporation, to enhance its market share through innovative product and market strategies."

"Finisar is honored to be chosen for the Frost & Sullivan Market Leadership Award for Fibre Channel Test Equipment," said Kevin Cornell, senior vice president, general manager Network Tools Division, Finisar. "It is a testament to our R&D group which continues to produce industry-leading products for managing and analyzing fibre channel environments."

Added Finisar President and CEO Jerry Rawls, "This recognition is significant because it is a direct result of the opinions of our customers, who are the most important reflections of our success."

About Finisar
Finisar Corporation (NASDAQ: FNSR) is a technology leader for fiber optic subsystems and network test and monitoring systems. These products enable high-speed data communications for networking and storage applications over Gigabit Ethernet Local Area Networks (LANs), Fibre Channel Storage Area Networks (SANs), and Metropolitan Area Networks (MANs) using Fibre Channel, IP and SONET/SDH protocols.

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