Features - Enterprise Data Insights:

NETWORK APPLIANCE SHOWS NEARLINE STORAGE MARKET LEADERSHIP

Network Appliance Inc, a leading provider of enterprise network storage solutions, has announced an important milestone in the nearline storage market: NetApp NearStore solutions have been deployed at more than 100 customer sites around the world. The company also announced that it has expanded its NearStore partnerships to include additional certified solutions with Legato and BakBone applications. This support is in addition to partnerships with other companies focused on business continuance, rapid recovery, data archiving, reference information, and collaborative and/or messaging applications, all ideal for the affordable, reliable, large-scale storage that NearStore provides.

"Other companies have hyped their nearline storage solutions and future strategies, but only Network Appliance has delivered systems to over 100 real-world customers," said Tony Prigmore, senior analyst, at Enterprise Storage Group. "As a pioneer in nearline storage, we expect Network Appliance to continue winning NearStore customers and advancing next-generation storage solutions."

NetApp NearStore is an integrated disk-to-disk solution that solves a variety of nearline storage challenges including:

• Simplifying data backup -- backing up primary storage to NearStore reduces complexity, freeing valuable IT time for other tasks
• Accelerating data recovery -- NearStore systems rapidly restore backed-up business-critical data much faster than from tape -- increasing business continuance and maintaining the highest levels of data availability
• Providing online access to reference information -- NetApp nearline storage solutions quickly retrieve and replicate reference and archive information maintained on cost-effective storage -- medical images, financial models, energy exploration charts and graphs, and other data-intensive records can be stored economically and accessed in multiple locations more quickly than ever
• Lowering the bar for disaster recovery -- NearStore enables organizations to replicate more of their data for disaster recovery at a more economical cost than ever before

NearStore systems debuted at 12 to 96TB configurations in March 2002. On October 1, Network Appliance unveiled a new 7TB NearStore system. List pricing for NearStore systems starts at less than USD0.02/MB.

About Network Appliance

Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992, Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner firsts that continue to drive the evolution of storage. Information about Network Appliance solutions and services is available at www.netapp.com.

Note to Editors: NetApp and SnapMirror are registered trademarks and Network Appliance, NearStore, SnapVault, and The evolution of storage are trademarks of Network Appliance Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

Customer Quotes

Professor Erwin Bellon, PACS project manager at UZ Leuven

"Originally our PACS archive had a hierarchical structure with OD and tape robots, now we must move more than 5TB of images to NearStore. One motivation was to benefit from a consolidated solution for all our storage hungry applications, with economies of scale and increased flexibility. A second motivation was fast access to older images, in order to continue improving patient care and productivity but for which we have to carefully balance costs against ease of management and ease of use. We intend to hold images online indefinitely, adding storage when needed and taking advantage of the anticipated price performance evolution in NearStore."

Jamie M. Riis, CIO at BayView Financial

"We deployed the NearStore R100 to improve the performance of our imaging system's retrieval times. In addition to this we also use it to store snapshots of user files and database files. We are able to store a month of data online, which eliminates our need to go to tape for data restores. Both of these have increased the operational efficiency of employees and IT staff. The product was simple to install and was operational within 4 hours of unpacking from the crate."

Ted Stoddard, director information technologies at EmergencyOne

"Information protection is our number one priority and NearStore with SnapMirror delivers seamless, uninterrupted, extensive scalability ensuring constant data access and complete data protection. Deploying NearStore provides us with a simplified, cost-effective, and reliable nearline storage solution that has enabled us to focus on our core competencies without spending unnecessary time troubleshooting storage or backup problems. NearStore allows us to put terabytes of data from multiple business operations on a single physical appliance that is flexible, scalable, and cost-effective. This provides us with a tremendous business advantage."

Contact: Eric Brown, Network Appliance Inc, 408-822-3463, ebrown@netapp.com.