AppIQ Continues to Demonstrate Deep Commitment to SMI-S Standard; Director of Product Marketing Named SNIA Storage Management Forum Requirements Chairperson.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 10, 2004

AppIQ(TM), Inc., a leading provider of enterprise software that enables data storage to be managed as an IT utility, today announced that its director of product marketing, John Kelly, will serve as a board member and Requirements Committee chairperson for the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) Storage Management Forum (SMF). The appointment demonstrates AppIQ's deep commitment to driving end user value from storage industry standards.

In his capacity as chairperson, Mr. Kelly will lead the SMF Requirements Committee to gather, communicate, and promote end user requirements for maximizing the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) to benefit today's businesses. Under its charter to ensure that SMI-S represents the needs of end users, software vendors and hardware vendors and delivers clear, end user business value, the Committee will work closely with storage administrators, architects and managers, as well as the SNIA End User Council and technical working groups to deliver market requirements for future releases of the SMI-S.

"The SNIA has declared 2004 the 'Year of the End User' and the SMF Requirements Committee will play a key role in making sure SMI-S represents the needs of our valued end users," said Ray Dunn, chairperson, SMF board of directors. "Mr. Kelly has a wealth of experience in storage product marketing which, combined with his experience as a storage industry analyst, will be instrumental in communicating the needs of storage administrators and managers into the SMI-S development process."

The SMF Requirements Committee represents a cross-section of the storage industry, and includes vendors, customers, and storage industry analysts:

-- Tony DiCenzo, Director of Industry Marketing, Brocade

Communications

-- Nancy End, Principal, NEE Associates

-- Kevin Gungiah, Director of Systems Administration, The Weather

Channel

-- John Kelly, Director of Product Marketing, AppIQ

-- Marty LeFebvre, Vice President of Technology Strategy, Nielsen

Media Research

-- Brian Mehlman, Product Manager, Network Appliance 

-- John Webster, Founder and Senior Analyst, Data Mobility Group

"It is important to bring together a diverse group - from storage software and hardware vendors to actual end users including storage administrators, architects, and strategists - to ensure that we understand user requirements and make standards-compliant solutions real and valuable for today's businesses," said John Kelly, Requirements Committee chairperson and director of product marketing, AppIQ. "Ultimately through our efforts, we will reduce the cost and complexity of managing heterogeneous storage networks, and enable enterprise IT organizations to deliver storage as a high-quality, on-demand service to business units."

With this appointment, AppIQ has expanded its presence within SNIA and the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) to include:

-- Chair, Architecture Working Group, DMTF

-- Chair, Management Services Modeling Task Force, SNIA

-- Chair, Requirements Committee, Storage Management Forum, SNIA

-- Active member, Disk Resource Management Technical Work Group,

SNIA

-- Active member, Fibre Channel Technical Work Group. SNIA

-- Active member, Management Application Technical Work Group,

SNIA

-- Active member, OS-Attach Technical Work Group, SNIA

-- Active member, SMI Lab, SNIA

Biography

John Kelly has served as AppIQ's director of product marketing since 2002. Immediately prior to AppIQ, Mr. Kelly was senior product marketing manager in the Storage Software Product Group at Sun Microsystems where he was responsible for the go-to-market positioning, messaging, and launch of all Sun storage software products including the integration and launch of acquired product lines from HighGround Systems and LSC. Mr. Kelly also served as director of product marketing at HighGround Systems, where he helped evangelize the storage resource management (SRM) market category, and launched HighGround Storage Resource Manager, the industry's first SRM solution for open systems.

About AppIQ

AppIQ, Inc. provides comprehensive software solutions that enable enterprise IT organizations to efficiently manage data storage as an application-focused IT utility. AppIQ's storage area management solutions seamlessly integrate storage network visualization, provisioning, monitoring, reporting, and policy-based automation, and correlate the availability of business-critical applications with SAN configuration, capacity and performance. Customers that rely on AppIQ solutions to reduce operational costs, improve IT efficiency and ensure application availability include Boston Stock Exchange, Nielsen Media Research, and The Weather Channel. AppIQ, based in Burlington, Mass., is a privately held firm funded by Matrix Partners, North Bridge Venture Partners, and other investors. For more information, visit http://www.appiq.com.

(C) 2004 AppIQ, Inc. AppIQ is a trademark of AppIQ, Inc. in the United States and in other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.