[February 12, 2014]

Independent Research Study Finds Network Visibility Improves Incident Resolution Times for Network and Security Operations

Emulex Corporation (NYSE:ELX), a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, today announced the results of a commissioned study conducted by Forrester (News - Alert) Consulting on behalf of Emulex. This study evaluated the range of issues that enterprise IT staffs face as they manage the performance of their business-critical application and business services. The results indicate that a lack of network visibility (i.e., ability to capture, record, search and visualize network traffic) negatively impacts the ability of IT staff to identify and resolve critical application performance issues, leading to substantial losses in business productivity and revenue. These conclusions are contained in a study entitled, "Improving Incident Response: Building a More Efficient IT Infrastructure," based on a survey of 158 IT organizations with more than 1,000 employees in North America with direct responsibility for business-critical applications.

The study analyzed the current state of application availability and performance, the consequences of limited availability and performance issues, and the desire for an ideal service management automation solution. The survey that was conducted as a part of the study revealed that network performance and network security have a direct effect on application Quality of Service (QoS), and that the increasing complexity of enterprise networks has been impacting the ability of IT organizations to maintain QoS levels. Despite continued corporate IT investment hiring/training the best people and providing them with tools, the challenge of providing secure and highly available enterprise networks continues to increase because network operations (NetOps) and security operations (SecOps) staff often do not have the data they need to resolve critical issues. Network visibility was identified as a critical strategy to address this issue, and to improve workforce productivity and cost management related to the identification and resolution of network and security issues in the data center.

The Forrester study focused on the key challenges facing enterprise IT staff in the face of such trends as the arrival of public/private/hybrid cloud computing, server/network virtualization, and software-as-a-service applications. While these trends are without question enabling enterprises to conduct more transactions per dollar and per second, they also can hide the factors impacting network performance and security, and hence impact the ability of IT staff to resolve these issues.

One of the key findings of the study that illustrates this was that 56 percent of the IT operations staff can resolve less than 75 percent of their performance and availability issues in 24 hours. The importance of addressing this situation was illustrated by three conclusions from the study:

• Performance of business services and their underlying applications and transactions are affected by the network, not only to improve or maintain productivity, but also as a way to contain costs.
• As business initiatives add complexity to an already complex series of business services, networks grow in importance relative to the overall infrastructure, not only as the backbone supporting client interactions, but also as the highway between all aggregated applications that constitute a business service.
• Business productivity and IT productivity are greatly dependent upon each other.

Recent catastrophic breaches in the retail sector and network issues in the banking sector highlight the negative impact that such network issues can have, not only on the bottom line of organizations, but also on customer loyalty and an organization's brand. One of the key recommendations of this study was that a disciplined approach to incident response, including end-to-end visibility of network infrastructure, is critical to resolving incidents like these more effectively and to reducing the disruption such incidents has on enterprises, the IT staff of those enterprises, and on their customers.

"When the Forrester study revealed that a majority of the enterprises cannot resolve a quarter of their network performance and availability problems in 24 hours, it stood out as a red flag," said Mike Riley, senior vice president and general manager, Endace division of Emulex. "As networks become more and more important, many leading organizations have begun to understand the need for accurate and complete network visibility to rapidly identify the root causes of problems confidently and without guesswork. We are committed to building the best network visibility systems to help customers get the most out of their staff and their existing tools, the end result of which is a dramatic improvement of their ability to resolve issues quickly and with a minimum of damage and disruption."

The Forrester Consulting thought leadership paper commissioned by Emulex, "Improving Incident Response: Building a More Efficient IT infrastructure" can be viewed in its entirety here. Join our webcast with guest speaker Jean-Pierre Garbani, vice president, principal analyst, Forrester Research (News - Alert), Inc. on February 18, 2014 at 7 a.m. PT to learn more about the results of this leadership paper. Register here.

Tweet this: Independent study shows critical value of #networkvisibility #forrester #emulex #endace: http://ow.ly/tw5hg

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About Emulex

Emulex, a leader in network connectivity, monitoring and management, provides hardware and software solutions for global networks that support enterprise, cloud, government and telecommunications. Emulex's products enable unrivaled end-to-end application visibility, optimization and acceleration. The Company's I/O connectivity offerings, including its line of ultra high-performance Ethernet and Fibre Channel-based connectivity products, have been designed into server and storage solutions from leading OEMs, including Cisco, Dell (News - Alert), EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, HP, Huawei, IBM, NetApp and Oracle, and can be found in the data centers of nearly all of the Fortune 1000. Emulex's monitoring and management solutions, including its portfolio of network visibility and recording products, provide organizations with complete network performance management at speeds up to 100Gb Ethernet. Emulex is headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., and has offices and research facilities in North America, Asia and Europe. For more information about Emulex (NYSE:ELX) please visit http://www.Emulex.com.

Emulex "Safe Harbor" Statement

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above contain forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. We expressly disclaim any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or changes to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. We wish to caution readers that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These factors include the possibility that all or a substantial portion of the cost savings targeted by us will not be realized at all or on a timely basis and that the financing and share repurchases implemented by us may not be completed in whole or in part or within the expected timeframe even though we expect to incur charges relating to the cost savings initiative. The assumptions on which the cost savings, share repurchase and capital return goals and expectations are based necessarily involve judgments with respect to, among other things, economic, competitive and financial market conditions and the impact of the cost savings initiative on our customers, all of which are difficult or impossible to predict and many of which are beyond the Company's control. Further factors include whether changes to the membership of our board of directors will have the desired effect in helping us achieve and implement our business and strategic goals. These factors also include the possibility that we may not realize the anticipated benefits from the acquisition of Endace Limited (Endace) on a timely basis or at all, and may be unable to integrate the technology, operations and personnel of Endace into our existing operations in a timely and efficient manner. In addition, intellectual property claims, with or without merit, that could result in costly litigation, cause product shipment delays, require us to indemnify customers, or require us to enter into royalty or licensing agreements, which may or may not be available. Furthermore, we have in the past obtained, and may be required in the future to obtain, licenses of technology owned by other parties. We cannot be certain that the necessary licenses will be available or that they can be obtained on commercially reasonable terms. If we were to fail to obtain such royalty or licensing agreements in a timely manner and on reasonable terms, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be materially adversely affected. Ongoing lawsuits, such as the action brought by Broadcom Corporation (News - Alert) (Broadcom), present inherent risks, any of which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations. Such potential risks include continuing expenses of litigation, loss of patent rights, monetary damages, injunctions against the sale of products incorporating the technology in question, counterclaims, attorneys' fees, incremental costs associated with product or component redesigns, liabilities to customers under reimbursement agreements or contractual indemnification provisions, and diversion of management's attention from other business matters. With respect to the continuing Broadcom litigation, such potential risks also include the adequacy of any sunset period to make design changes, the ability to implement any design changes, the availability of customer resources to complete any re-qualification or re-testing that may be needed, the ability to maintain favorable working relationships with Emulex suppliers of serializer/deserializer (SerDes) modules, and the ability to obtain a settlement which does not put us at a competitive disadvantage. In addition, the fact that the economy generally, and the technology and storage market segments specifically, have been in a state of uncertainty makes it difficult to determine if past experience is a good guide to the future and makes it impossible to determine if markets will grow or shrink in the short term. Continued weakness in domestic and worldwide macro-economic conditions, related disruptions in world credit and equity markets, and the resulting economic uncertainty for our customers, as well as the storage and converged networking market as a whole, has and could continue to adversely affect our revenues and results of operations. As a result of these uncertainties, we are unable to predict our future results with any accuracy. Other factors affecting these forward-looking statements include but are not limited to the following: faster than anticipated declines in the storage networking market, slower than expected growth of the converged networking market or the failure of our Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) customers to successfully incorporate our products into their systems; our dependence on a limited number of customers and the effects of the loss of, decrease in or delays of orders by any such customers, or the failure of such customers to make timely payments; the emergence of new or stronger competitors as a result of consolidation movements in the market; the timing and market acceptance of our products or our OEM customers' new or enhanced products; costs associated with entry into new areas of the network, server and storage technology markets; the variability in the level of our backlog and the variable and seasonal procurement patterns of our customers; any inadequacy of our intellectual property protection and the costs of actual or potential third-party claims of infringement and any related indemnity obligations or adverse judgments; the effect of any actual or potential unsolicited offers to acquire us; proxy contests or the activities of activist investors; impairment charges, including but not limited to goodwill and intangible assets; changes in tax rates or legislation; the effects of acquisitions; the effects of terrorist activities, natural disasters, and any resulting disruption in our supply chain or customer purchasing patterns or any other resulting economic or political instability; the highly competitive nature of the markets for our products as well as pricing pressures that may result from such competitive conditions; the effects of changes in our business model to separately charge for software; the effect of rapid migration of customers towards newer, lower cost product platforms; transitions from board or box level to application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) solutions for selected applications; a shift in unit product mix from higher-end to lower-end or mezzanine card products; a faster than anticipated decrease in the average unit selling prices or an increase in the manufactured cost of our products; delays in product development; our reliance on third-party suppliers and subcontractors for components and assembly; our ability to attract and retain key technical personnel; our ability to benefit from our research and development activities; our dependence on international sales and internationally produced products; changes in accounting standards; and any resulting regulatory changes on our business. These and other factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements and are discussed in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our recent filings on Forms 10-K and 10-Q, under the caption "Risk Factors."

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