Force10 Networks Scores Record Revenue

Force10 Networks today announced that it reached record revenue levels in the first quarter of 2005, which ended Jan. 31. Driven by a growing customer base and significant demand for the TeraScale E-Series, Force10 shipped a record number of Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports and increased its customer base by 10 percent. Force10's growth in the first quarter builds on momentum gained in 2004, when the company increased its 10 Gigabit Ethernet port shipments 540 percent, far outpacing the rate of growth in the market. "The first quarter was an unqualified success for Force10 as TeraScale shipments began to ramp, we continued to diversify our customer base and, perhaps most significantly, we expanded our footprint within our existing customers' networks," said Marc Randall, president and CEO of Force10 Networks. "Force10's growth this quarter coupled with the overwhelmingly positive response from customers regarding TeraScale bodes well for our continued success as we move into new vertical markets." Announced last September, the Force10 TeraScale E-Series delivers industry-leading densities and resiliency. In the first full quarter of shipping, demand for the TeraScale E-Series came from both existing customers looking to increase network capacity as well as prospective customers that require a reliable high performance networking solution. Force10 continued to distinguish itself as a leader in high performance networking during the first quarter. At SuperComputing 2004, the Force10 TeraScale E-Series delivered 44 line-rate 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports in single chassis while providing the connectivity and aggregation for SCinet, the conference's production-quality network. During the conference's annual Bandwidth Challenge, the TeraScale E-Series processed more than 136.2 Gigabits per second of sustained throughput, setting speed, distance and throughput records. Additionally, according to the most recent Top500.org list of the world's largest supercomputers, the Force10 E-Series anchors five of the top 15 supercomputers, including Europe's largest supercomputer. Of the world's 50 largest supercomputers, the E-Series provides the reliable foundation for seven, which have a combined computing speed of 66.35 trillion calculations per second. The industry also continued to recognize Force10's achievements. In January, the Force10 TeraScale E1200 was named enterprise switching and routing product of the year by Searchnetworking.com. In December, industry analyst Gartner named Force10 as a visionary in its Global Campus LAN magic quadrant. Reflecting the significant customer demand for the TeraScale E-Series, Force10 continued to expand its sales team in the first quarter, naming Dennis O'Connell vice president of the U.S. central region. As Force10 moves into new vertical markets and extends its existing customer base with deployments in research and education environments, like Penn State and Internet2's HOPI project, large enterprises, such as OSI Systems, and service providers like SRS Sakura Internet, the company will continue to build its sales team.