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NETWORK APPLIANCE AND ESRI ENHANCE GIS RELATIONSHIP

Network Appliance Inc, a leading provider of enterprise network storage solutions, and ESRI, a world leader in geographic information system (GIS), have announced a formal reseller relationship to deliver networked storage solutions to ESRI customers. ESRI is now an authorized reseller of NetApp storage systems. Through this relationship, ESRI will offer NetApp products to its customers, providing complete solutions for GIS environments that now encompass enterprise-class storage.

NetApp storage solutions have been tested and proven compatible with ESRI software. As such, ESRI customers using ArcGIS and ArcSDE can reap benefits from the simplicity and power of NetApp storage. These benefits include centralized data management, the ability to share ESRI data across the network, fast access to both current and archived GIS data, flexible implementation of disaster recovery configurations with NetApp SnapMirror software and NearStore systems, and a low total cost of ownership.

NetApp storage solutions provide ESRI customers with high-performance enterprise storage that offers unified NAS and SAN capability, high data availability, and the ability to increase capacity that is instantly usable, all without downtime. NetApp storage systems provide scalability with up to 48TB per system with the FAS960c. In addition, NetApp storage systems offer full support for leading databases including Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server.

Additionally, Network Appliance offers a range of storage solutions ideal for storing ESRI data at remote sites. Also the NetApp NearStore system, a nearline storage solution, is well suited for large ESRI deployments looking to reduce administrative overhead and improve IT efficiencies when backing up and restoring data or when implementing a disaster recovery solution. Along with SnapMirror, NearStore allows ESRI data from filers at several locations to be replicated to one central site for backup and disaster recovery purposes.

"NetApp addresses enterprise storage solutions and data management challenges for our GIS customers," said Jack Dangermond, ESRI president. "We are excited to partner with NetApp to provide enterprise storage solutions to our customers."

"ESRI is the leader in GIS, and we are proud to announce our enhanced relationship. Together, our goal is to provide complete customer satisfaction in GIS environments and to expand our install base of mutual customers. With unique expertise in the GIS market, ESRI will be able to offer an array of flexible and easy-to-implement NetApp solutions to customers for their data storage, data sharing, and disaster recovery needs," said Mark Santora, senior vice president of marketing at Network Appliance.

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(TM) solutions and services is available at www.netapp.com.

Contact: Jaime Le of Network Appliance Inc, 408-822-3761, jle@netapp.com.