Alacritus to Demo Chronospan Continuous Data Protection with the Cisco MDS 9000; Continuous Data Protection Solution can be viewed at Storage Networking World.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

Storage Networking World Spring 2004

PLEASANTON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 1, 2004

Alacritus Software, the innovator in disk-based data protection solutions, announced today that it will participate in a multi-vendor technology demonstration with Cisco Systems, Inc.(R) of a new software feature being developed for the Cisco MDS 9000 Family at next week's Storage Networking World in Phoenix, AZ.

The Cisco MDS 9000 Data Tap Service, will provide a protocol-based interface between the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN switches and third-party storage appliances, thus allowing Chronospan(R) to take full advantage of the industry-leading reliability, scalability, and multi-protocol services available on the Cisco storage area networking (SAN) switch portfolio.

Chronospan replaces traditional labor-intensive and error-prone backup and restore schemes with a continuous, background process that actually eliminates the backup window.

According to David Hill, Vice President of Storage Research for the Aberdeen Group, "Chronospan is the type of intelligent storage service that will enable the Cisco MDS 9000 Family to deliver immediate results to the enterprise in terms of advanced data protection technologies, performance, manageability, as well as TCO considerations." Hill continued, "This relationship will help validate the effectiveness deploying Chronospan in a high-performance enterprise environment. Since Chronospan is entirely removed from the primary data path, this solution will overcome the barrier of entry into mission critical environments that other CDP vendors still face."

Chronospan delivers the following benefits to the enterprise:

-- Chronospan lets enterprises rapidly restore data to Any Point

in Time (APIT(TM)). This means that lost data can be

immediately recovered to the exact moment before the loss.

-- Chronospan actually renders management of complex

backup/restore processes unnecessary; in many cases, totally

eliminating the need for backup and restore software.

-- Chronospan also provides radically faster restore times

through the simplification of the logical data protection

process, the reduction in the burden upon IT administrators,

and the elimination of the backup window.

-- In addition to block-level services, Chronospan also offers

unique file-level services; where particular files can be

easily browsed and restored across multiple points in time.

According to Don Trimmer, Chief Strategic Officer at Alacritus, "Chronospan provides any point in time copy protection without the need to explicitly create snapshots at any specific time. All writes to primary disk are mirrored to the Chronospan disks and are written sequentially." Trimmer continued, "This has absolutely no impact on the performance of production applications. Storing these mirrored writes actually allows IT administrators to create 'on-the-fly' snapshots of the primary disk for any particular time after the fact."

Chronospan logs every write sequentially into a write log. This provides a tremendous performance advantage to the user, even with low-cost ATA disks. Management of the write log is policy based. A Chronospan protection policy defines the APIT window, in which the user can roll back to any point in time that has occurred. A policy also provides additional snapshot views that can span weeks, months and even years.

Chronospan CDP is currently available for early implementations at select customer sites and will ship in Q2 2004. Alacritus is demonstrating Chronospan in Booth C5 at Storage Networking World.

Demo Availability

The Chronospan/Cisco MDS 9000 Data Tap Service demo can be viewed at the Cisco booth (#P10) on Tuesday, April 6 and Wednesday, April 7 during the expo hours at Storage Networking World Spring 2004. SNW Spring 2004 will be held at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge in Phoenix from April 5 through 8.

For more information, contact Alacritus at 925-469-0725 x 212 or visit the Alacritus Software website at www.alacritus.com.