Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

LightSand ANNOUNCES ACQUISITION OF SANcastle

LightSand, a developer of high-end SAN gateway products announced that it has executed definitive agreements regarding a new round of funding and the acquisition of SANcastle Technologies Inc, a manufacturer of FCIP gateways and inter-fabric switch (AR/DAT) technology.

"LightSand has exceeded its sales goals every quarter since we began shipping products last year," said LightSand CEO Philip Black. "Our successes in the market have enabled us to raise this round which should take us to positive cash flow."

The investors in this round include Baring Equity Partners Asia, Concord Venture Partners, Fremont Ventures and Genesis Partners Group. The Boards of Directors of LightSand and SANcastle have approved the acquisition, which, after obtaining shareholder approval from each company and satisfying other closing conditions, is expected to close in August 2003.

"The combined company will offer the broadest selection of SAN connectivity products available," said Gregg Pugmire, LightSand VP of Business Development. "LightSand's SAN extension gateways provide high performance data movement over SONET/SDH, DWDM and dedicated fiber optic networks. SANcastle's product line is the perfect complement to this family. SANcastle's SAN extension products operate over an IP infrastructure, providing customers with a more affordable platform for SAN extension requirements. By combining the LightSand and SANcastle products we now offer a solution to meet any price/performance requirement."

"SANcastle's inter-fabric switch technology (i-Switch) solves a major industry issue, SAN scalability, by using the AR/DAT (autonomous region / domain address translation) proposed industry standard." added Peter Dixon, SANcastle's EVP Sales and Marketing, "The i-Switch also enables the creation of multi-vendor SAN fabrics and provides SAN to SAN isolation. For the first time, as multiple SAN fabrics are brought together, changes made to one SAN fabric do not disrupt the operation of the others."

SANcastle products and employees will be integrated into LightSand with headquarters in Milpitas, California. The Company will retain the LightSand name and be headed by Philip Black, LightSand's current CEO. The company will operate sales and service offices around the globe.