ADIC introduces innovative service approach to backup systems.

Advanced Digital Information Corporation (Nasdaq:ADIC), a leader in Intelligent Storage solutions for the open systems market, has unveiled iSurety, the company's new comprehensive service approach. ADIC's iSurety service leverages advanced data access technology to save end users time and money and provide faster and more certain resolution for complex, system-wide backup issues.

iSurety links ADIC's service teams and resources with its customers, their ADIC libraries and disk-backup systems, and the diagnostic information from their storage environment. A key component of iSurety is iLink, a new technology that gives the ADIC service team secure, remote access both to ADIC's platform diagnostics and to diagnostic data from the surrounding storage ecosystem. iSurety also provides users remote access to ADIC technical service resources, including online service request processing, web-based event status tracking, and the ADIC Customer Support Center (CSC), which provides on-line configuration, service, and product information.

iSurety leverages the relational diagnostics of ADIC's Scalar i2000 tape library, an event response approach that reduces service calls by 50% over conventional libraries and provides 30% faster issue resolution. (See today's related announcement, "ADIC Introduces Major Upgrade for Enterprise Tape Library.")

"ADIC is committed to giving our customers better service through smarter use of technology, not by building bigger and more costly support organizations," said Lisa Clarke, vice president, ADIC Global Services. "As data protection systems become more complicated, service organizations need visibility into the entire backup ecosystem, in addition to the tape library itself, so they can quickly and accurately identify the root cause of issues and resolve them faster. The ADIC iSurety service approach gives us this visibility, and for the first time it allows us to diagnose the entire system remotely over a secure, interactive link. As a result, our customers spend less time managing backup, get faster issue resolution, and achieve better utilization of their backup resources."

ADIC's iLink technology provides a connection to the intelligent diagnostics inside ADIC storage solutions, and it is the first diagnostic tool to extend remote problem solving beyond the tape library into the user's storage environment. Through a simple web interface, iLink provides secure, two-way communications between the authorized service team in ADIC's Secure Service Center and the diagnostics in libraries, disk-backup systems, backup software, HBAs, and fabric. By giving remote access to the extended backup environment, iLink allows service technicians to provide faster root cause identification, more accurate diagnosis, and faster resolution. iLink also has the ability to recommend additional action, initiate corrective actions, exercise devices and applications for troubleshooting, and provide a repair confirmation. ADIC's iLink technology will be available beginning in March 2005.

"By combining the intelligence ADIC builds into our libraries and disk-backup platforms with our intelligent iSurety service approach we give our customers a more effective overall backup process, whether they deploy traditional tape libraries or include disk-based components as part of their architecture," continued Clarke.

"It's about time that someone gave IT managers a better way of dealing with the complexity and the rising costs of enterprise backup," said Peter Gerr of Enterprise Strategy Group. "ADIC's level of commitment to and investment in improving diagnostics and service is raising the bar for the industry. This powerful and unique approach has the potential to reduce operational costs by extending service beyond the library and into the storage ecosystem around it."

ADIC's iSurety approach applies to all ADIC storage platform solutions, including the Scalar 10K, the Scalar i2000, Scalar 100, Scalar 24, and Pathlight VX disk-based back-up system.