archived press 2002
Major Alliance of Ten Leading Storage Vendors to Deliver Comprehensive SAN Hardwareand Software Package
Success fully launched in the United States, First Pre-tested and Certified Solution from OSMR Program Will Debut at CeBIT 2002 - Hanover, Germany for the European Market.

CeBIT, Hanover - Germany March. 13 2002 - An alliance of ten leading hardware and software storage vendors today announced the introduction of their comprehensive Storage Area Network (SAN) solution to the European market. Successfully launched in the United States October 2001 at the Storage Networking World Conference, E-Z-SAN is the first certified SAN package available through the Open Storage Management Resources (OSMR) program, which was created to ensure product-to-product compatibility and deliver simplified SAN solutions to market. E-Z-SAN provides up to 5 terabytes of easily managed storage and will be demonstrated at CeBIT, Hanover from March 13th to March 20th in the American Pavilion Hall 1, Stand 6E2, Booth A06.

The OSMR program is unique in that customers can purchase a pre-certified and tested hardware bundle and then choose from a variety of leading OSMR program software vendors' products to easily deploy key applications such as storage virtualization, auto backup/restore, volume management and storage resource management. Participating hardware companies include Silicon Image - CMD Storage Systems (NASDAQ:SIMG), Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), Emulex Corporation, JMR Electronics Inc., JNI Corporation (NASDAQ: JNIC), Seagate and Vixel Corporation (NASDAQ: VIXL). OSMR software vendors include BakBone Software (TSE: BKB, OTC: BKBOF), OTG Software (NASDAQ: OTGS), Sanbolic Inc., and Vixel SANInsite. A solution designed for workgroup and departmental level environment, the E-Z-SAN hardware bundle and software applications are available now through qualified value added distributors and integrators.

"The OSMR initiative with E-Z-SAN solution provides the flexibility of supplier choice along with assured interoperability among components, software and systems," said John McArthur, group vice president of storage research for IDC. "Solutions that are hassle-free and avoid the lock-in of proprietary alternatives are a big move in the right direction."

Over the last year, OSMR program vendors have conducted exhaustive interoperability testing with all software and hardware offerings to guarantee product compatibility at all levels. OSMR vendors are working closely with distributors and resellers to support E-Z-SAN and additional OSMR packages by providing hands-on technical training and education, reducing deployment issues and increasing overall support services to end-users.

The E-Z-SAN solution is comprised of the following products:

BakBone's NetVault backup/restore software
OTG's Diskxtender 2000 and SANxtender
Vixel SANinsite software
Sanbolic's advanced volume sharing software, Kayo 2.0
Seagate Drives
Hitachi Disk Drives
JMR's FORTRA 10 & 15 Bay Raid subsystem
Silicon Image, CMD Storage Systems' redundant Fibre Channel RAID Controllers
JNI's 64-bit Dual Port PCI-to-Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (33 MHz), FCE-6410
Emulex's Fibre Channel 952L Host Bus Adapter
Vixel's 16-port 7200 Fibre Channel Switch

Participating Partner Quotes
"Providing manufacturer certified solutions for the storage and protection of our customers most valuable commodity, their data, is our ultimate goal," says Larry E. Fox, director of strategic alliances for BakBone Software. "We have an obligation and have taken the next step to ensure that our partners as well as our end users purchase a solution they can have confidence in."

"As the pioneer in fibre channel disc drive technology, Seagate's commitment in driving this technology forward and ensuring continued interoperability between vendors has ultimately helped enable the creation of the E-Z-SAN storage solution," said Gordy Lutz, Seagate Enterprise product marketing manager and member of the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) Board of Directors. "The benefit of the OSMR program and working together is clear - The products offered will continue to maintain interoperability, as well as provide all of the benefits of fibre channel including unmatched system scalability and performance."

"Hitachi is pleased to join JMR and the other OSMR partners to provide a flexible, comprehensive solution for our customers," said Hal Malone, director of sales and marketing, 3.5" HDD for Hitachi America, Ltd. "Hitachi hard drives fit well in the E-Z-SAN solution, providing the high performance, reliability and capacity demanded by today's discerning customer for high throughput operating environments. We look forward to working with this group of industry leaders to meet the evolving needs of the dynamic storage market."

"Silicon Image, CMD Storage Systems is a long-standing leader in providing data protection at the very heart of a wide variety of storage solutions installed worldwide," stated Steve Garceau, product marketing manager, Silicon Image, CMD Storage Systems. "We are committed to working with our OSMR partners to deliver complete, pre-qualified solutions that solve data storage problems. E-Z- SAN solves solution interoperability, operational complexity, and post-sale support issues while providing a good value to the customer."

Duran Alabi, director of marketing and business development for JMR noted, "JMR is committed to partnering with storage technology leaders that offer storage products designed with reliable, scalable and robust technology tools that meet the performance needs of our joint storage value added resellers and their data-intensive customers. We are confident that with E-Z-SAN and the combination of our proven expertise of over 19 years experience in creating award winning modular storage subsystems, resellers and end-users will greatly benefit from this vendor consortium initiative to offer a simple and cost-effective SAN."

"JNI has long advocated solutions such as E-Z-SAN that make storage networks simpler and easier to use," said Shaun Walsh, vice president of marketing, JNI Corporation. "Our history of providing customers with broad-based interoperability testing, 24x7x365 live support, and even our industry leading EZ Fibre(tm) Fibre Channel host bus adapter configuration and management software have all contributed to making SANs easier to build and manage. JMR has taken an additional step in delivering a total package solution."

"OTG has been partnering with leaders in storage technology to streamline and simplify storage management for our customers for years," said William Caple, executive vice president, OTG Software."By participating in the OSMR program, and helping deliver E-Z-SAN, we are providing our customers with an interoperable, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy solution for SAN environments."

"A pre-tested and certified SAN solution will enable our customers to focus on their core business and not worry about the components of their SAN," Says Chris Hurley, VP of sales & marketing for Sanbolic, Inc. "We believe this program will provide our customers a storage solution with a new level of reliability and better return on their investment."

"By working closely with partner companies to simplify the storage implementation process, we are helping both VARs and our mutual end-users reduce their total cost of ownership and increase their return on investment," said Claude Lorenson, director of product marketing, Vixel Corporation. "For years, storage solutions have been proprietary, limiting the number of products available to customers. With E-Z-SAN our customers now have the opportunity to deploy a fully heterogeneous SAN with optimum support services."

Pricing, Availability and Support
The E-Z-SAN solution is available for immediate delivery through a network of qualified resellers and solution integrators, with prices starting at $30,000 (US) a single point of support for E-Z-SAN is also provided by Anacomp Technical Services Int.

About BakBone Software
BakBone Software™ is a global storage management software company that develops and distributes industry-leading storage management solutions. The company provides data protection solutions for open systems environments that are scalable from workgroup to enterprise. BakBone's core products include nearline optical and archival, as well as tape backup and restore software, offering a full suite of storage management solutions to the corporate data center.

NetVault, BakBone's flagship product, offers simplicity of use with unparalleled backup performance. It is a full-featured software solution with a modular architecture. NetVault provides a single storage management solution, from the desktop to the implementation of SAN and NAS, growing with the customer's computing needs. BakBone's other core product is MagnaVault, the industry leading UNIX optical and archival software solution.

About Hitachi
Hitachi America, Ltd., Computer Division, supplies high-performance computer storage products and multimedia products to OEMs, value-added resellers, system integrators and distributors. The division's products include high-capacity hard disk drives and DVD-ROM and -RAM drives, digital multimedia recorders, LCD projectors, CRT monitors, color laser beam printers and flat panel and plasma displays. Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., markets and manufactures a broad range of electronics, computer systems and products, consumer electronics and semiconductors and provides industrial equipment and services throughout North America. For more information, visit www.hitachi.com.

Hitachi, Ltd., headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2000 (ended March 31, 2001) consolidated sales of 8,417 billion yen ($67.9 billion*). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.

*At an exchange rate of 124 yen to the dollar.

About JMR
JMR is an ISO 9001 vertically integrated manufacturer of electronic enclosures for computer peripheral devices. With 20 years of experience in the turnkey manufacturing industry, JMR directs the Fortra product line, providing compatibility and interoperability testing with other technology vendors in the dynamic storage market. JMR is headquarters in Chatsworth, CA, U.S.A. For more information on JMR, visit: www.jmr.com.

About JNI Corporation
JNI Corporation is a leading manufacturer of enterprise-level products used to create storage networks, and is the dominant manufacturer of host bus adapters (HBAs) for the Solaris environment. JNI offers a broad line of FibreStar(r) HBAs, Emerald(TM) ASICs, and EZ Fibre(TM) and DriverSuite(TM) software for SANs. JNI's products operate on Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows NT, HP-UX, AIX, Novell, Linux and Mac OS systems. JNI customers, distributors and strategic partners include Acal FCS, Avid, Bell Microproducts, Brocade, Chaparral, Compaq StorageWorks, Consan, Crossroads, EMC, Eurologic, Gadzoox, GE Access, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Info X, JMR, LSI Logic, McDATA, Nishan Systems, Sun Microsystems, TidalWire and Veritas. Company headquarters are in San Diego, with offices throughout the U.S. and Munich (München), Germany. www.jni.com.

About OTG Software
OTG Software provides next-generation data management and collaboration solutions that virtualize storage for any type of data, including files, messages and databases, while providing easy and transparent access. OTG's application-oriented approach supports all platforms with open architecture solutions that scale from the department to the enterprise, and integrate seamlessly to store, track and retrieve information. Headquarters in Rockville, Maryland, the company has a customer base of over 15,000 organizations and a global network of VARs, distributors, and OEMs. Infinite Storage. Immediate AccessTM . www.otg.com.

About Sanbolic, Inc.
Sanbolic Inc. is a privately held company that was founded in April 2000. Headquarters are located in Watertown, Massachusetts (US East Coast) and with offices on the US West Coast, and in Europe. Sanbolic is a developer and manufacturer of an advanced software and file system for shared storage. The solutions provided address the data sharing, management and network infrastructure needs of the storage market. Sanbolic offers storage customers a new opportunity to better manage and benefit from SAN implementations, an affordable alternative that optimizes the benefits of working in shared storage environment. Kayo 2.0 is a sophisticated volume sharing software for Windows NT and 2000 that is currently shipping. Melio FS is a file system specifically designed for shared storage environments. Melio FS will provide SAN and NAS convergence, heterogeneous operating system support, seamless scalability, reliability, and unprecedented performance. For more information on Sanbolic, visit www.sanbolic.com.

About Silicon Image, CMD Storage Systems
Headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., Silicon Image designs, develops and markets multi-gigabit semiconductor and system solutions for a variety of communications applications demanding high- bandwidth capability. With its proprietary Multi-layer Serial Link (MSL™) architecture, Silicon Image is well positioned for leadership in multiple mass markets including PCs, consumer electronics, storage and networking. Currently, Silicon Image leads the global PC/display arena with its innovative digital interconnect technology, and is now emerging as a leading player in the storage industry-offering robust, high-bandwidth semiconductors and systems. For more information on Silicon Image, visit www.siliconimage.com.

About Vixel Corporation
Vixel Corporation offers customers real world solutions for storage networking. As a leading provider of Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions, the company's comprehensive portfolio of multivendor certified solutions, switches, hubs and integrated management software delivers reliable, interoperable solutions to its customers and partners. SAN InSite is Vixel's comprehensive open management software for SANs, providing remote control and diagnostics for Fibre Channel switches, hubs and transceivers from a single console, reducing the administration and overhead of implementing a SAN. Vixel products and technology are used by major system suppliers including Avid Technologies, Compaq, Fujitsu Softec, IBM, Lucent, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems. Products are available worldwide through its network of value-added resellers, alliances and OEMs. Vixel is an ISO 9001 certified company.

For more information, visit Vixel's web site at www.vixel.com. Vixel Corporation is headquarters at 11911 North Creek Parkway South, Bothell, Washington 98011 and can be contacted by phone at 425-806-5509 or e-mail at marketing@vixel.com.

About Seagate
Seagate is the world's leading provider of storage technology for Internet, business and consumer applications. The Company's products include disc drives for the Enterprise, PCs and Consumer Electronics, as well as Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions. Seagate's market leadership is based on delivering award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at: www.seagate.com.

OSMR Corporate Partner Contacts:
Duran Alabi
JMR
818-739-1117
duran@jmr.com
or
sales@e-z-san.com
www.e-z-san.com

The following terms are trademarks of Sanbolic, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries: Sanbolic, Kayo, Melio FS. HP-UX is a trademark of the Hewlett Packard Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and/or other countries licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited. AIX is a trademark of the International Business Machines Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other company, product, and service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

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+ Sanbolic's Kayo Featured in E-Z-SAN Program Press Release