ADIC Extends Capacity of Its EMASS Automated Library With Support for New Enhanced Sony AIT Media.

REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 8, 1998--Advanced Digital Information Corp. (Nasdaq:ADIC) Thursday announced that it has extended the capacity advantage for its EMASS AML/S AIT-based automated tape library by integrating Sony's new enhanced AIT media.

The compact AML/S now delivers an incredible industry-leading 1.8 terabytes per square foot at 1-terabyte-per-hour aggregate data throughput.

Sony's extended-length AIT media increases cartridge capacity from 25 gigabytes to 35 gigabytes in native mode, and to 70 gigabytes with data compression enabled. With the addition of this new media, the EMASS libraries extend their capacity by 40 percent and maintain their lead by providing the highest-capacity automated AIT solutions on the market.

The EMASS AML/S was the first AIT-based library to fulfill the capacity, data-access and automation demands of enterprise storage and data-center environments. EMASS and Sony can now provide those customers with an enhanced-capacity media that works with the originally installed AIT drives, thereby preserving the customer's investment.

The AML/S library offers AIT configurations with up to 48 drives and up to 1,182 cartridges, representing a dramatic increase in capacity and data throughput compared with the closest competitive AIT libraries.

Incorporating the expanded-capacity cartridge increases the capacity of the base AML/S configuration from 5.9 to 8.3 terabytes, while a fully expanded AML/S library now provides a capacity of 41.4 terabytes, up from 29.6.

"AIT has proven to be a robust and reliable technology for even the most storage-intensive applications," said Jeff Fox, senior vice president of Engineering Development for ADIC and EMASS. "The AIT-equipped AML/S already provided the best-of-class capacity, performance and value, and now with a 40 percent capacity increase, the gap between the AML/S and its competition is even wider."

"The introduction of the extended-capacity AIT media is the latest example of Sony's commitment to continually enhance the AIT technology platform," said John Woelbern, senior marketing manager of Tape Streamer Products for Sony Electronics' Component Co.

"This new enhanced-capacity cartridge gives current AIT customers a significant capacity increase and a scalable bridge to AIT-2 and beyond," said Woelbern. "These new features will further enhance AIT's competitiveness in the high-end enterprise storage market."

Sony's enhanced AIT media supports fast file-access capabilities by incorporating the award-winning Memory-in-Cassette (MIC) technology. MIC consists of a memory chip built into the data cartridge that holds the system's log and other user-definable information.

MIC provides extremely fast media load and file search times compared with competing tape technologies (average load time of 10 seconds with MIC, vs. 45 seconds or more for most other technologies).

Sony's AIT tape technology provides an ideal performance match for the high-speed robotics of the AML/S library, which is capable of performing up to 350 cartridge exchanges per hour, the highest performance in its class. And with the ability to automate 48 drives, users can have up to 3.4 terabytes of accessible data mounted in drives.

The fast file-access performance of the AIT drives, combined with the fast cartridge retrieval of the AML/S robotics, creates unprecedented data-access performance for large-scale data-storage and -retrieval applications, including enterprise-backup, database- storage, imaging and data-warehousing environments.

The EMASS AML/S with AIT technology is supported by a wide range of storage-management software, including ADIC's AMASS archive software, Legato's NetWorker, Spectralogic's Alexandria and IBM's ADSM.

The AML/S library with Sony Advanced Intelligent Tape drives is currently available from EMASS, with end-user pricing starting at $49,950. Sony's new extended-length AIT media is scheduled to begin shipments to OEM customers at the end of this year.

Larger EMASS libraries -- the AML/J, AML/E and AML/2 -- are also available with AIT technology, including support for the new high- capacity media, as are the ADIC VLS SDX and QLS SDX tape libraries.

About ADIC and EMASS

With headquarters in Redmond, Advanced Digital Information Corp. has been providing data-storage solutions since its founding in 1983. It has an installed base of more than 30,000 automated libraries. EMASS, based in Englewood, Colo., is wholly owned by ADIC.

The combined company is the leading drive-independent supplier of automated tape libraries used to back up and archive digital data. The company offers the broadest range of tape-library products in the industry -- from gigabytes to petabytes -- backed by a worldwide field sales and service network.

Marketed under the ADIC and EMASS names as well as those of OEM partners, library products are available with DLT, D2, half-inch, AIT (Sony), 4mm and 8mm tape-drive technologies and are supported by leading suppliers of backup and storage-management software products.

The company's own storage-management software is an integrated family of software products including Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) and high-performance direct-access archive software, as well as volume-management software for libraries.

During 1997, ADIC became a minority investor in Fibre Channel architecture pioneer Crossroads Systems Inc. and introduced a family of Fibre Channel routers for use in storage area networks. In 1998, the company announced a product-licensing and -development agreement with Veritas Software (Nasdaq:VRTS) and a significant OEM supply partnership with Dell Computer Corp. (Nasdaq:DELL).

Further product information is available via the Internet at http://www.adic.com and http://www.emass.com.

Note to Editors: EMASS, AMASS and ADIC are trademarks of Advanced Digital Information Corp. Sony, Advanced Intelligent Tape and MIC are trademarks of Sony. DLT and DLTtape are trademarks of Quantum Corp. All other product and company names are the property of their respective owners.