QLogic Corp. today announced that its 8100 Series Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) converged network adapter (CNA) has been recognized by Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com as an enterprise data storage 2009 Product of the Year Finalist in the publications' storage networking equipment category. The QLogic(R) 8100 Series is the only CNA in the industry to be recognized as a finalist.

The finalists in this year's competition were broken into five storage product categories: backup and disaster recovery hardware, backup and disaster recovery software and services, disks and disk subsystems, storage management tools and storage networking equipment. The QLogic 8100 Series is one of six finalists in the storage network equipment category.

"While 2009 was a bleak year economically, it didn't stifle the continuing technological developments of many enterprise data storage equipment vendors," said the editors of SearchStorage. "These 40 finalists for Storage magazine's and SearchStorage.com's 2009 Products of the Year awards demonstrate exceptional innovation, functionality and value."

The QLogic 8100 Series CNA was recognized for its single-chip architecture, integrated FCoE engine with no external components, and for its ability to handle data and storage networking traffic at 10Gb/second line speeds in blade server and high-density environments.