BP Oil Selects Legato Systems for Enterprise Storage Management Solution.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 6, 1998--Legato Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:LGTO), a leader in the enterprise storage management software market, today announced that BP Oil, the refining and marketing arm of the international oil company, has selected Legato Systems Inc. to provide a complete storage management solution. The implementation will affect 300 servers in 20 countries worldwide, and involve approximately 3 terabytes of data. The multi-year contract is for Legato NetWorker, a high performance storage management solution that fully protects distributed, business-critical data. The implementation is expected to be deployed by the end of the year.

Legato NetWorker has been designed to deliver a consistent, global architecture, providing maximum flexibility to cope with network growth. At BP Oil, Legato NetWorker will be deployed to manage the backups of their Sun and Sequent platforms used to run the Company's Global Systems Programme, an enterprise-wide IT project designed to enhance business operations and management control. The program is currently running in 16 countries and due to be rolled out in a further four countries in 1998.

Ian Julien, manager, Technology, BP Oil commented, "Wherever possible we try to buy, not build, our solutions. What we needed in this instance was an off-the-shelf storage management solution, which would be flexible and user-friendly, yet at the same time secure. However, what impressed us and eventually led us to select Legato NetWorker was the fact that Legato listened to our needs and reacted quickly to produce those changes to the product which addressed our concerns. I have never before experienced a vendor reacting with such speed."

Brian Haynes, country manager, Legato Systems (UK) added, "Legato NetWorker was chosen to support BP Oil because it satisfied their four main criteria -- functionality, interoperability, performance and security, which in turn will lead to lower administration costs, a reduction in backup times, and the greater availability of data."

Charles Lucci, European operations director for Legato Systems, Inc. added, "The data storage industry has grown enormously in the last several years. We are now seeing the creation of a billion files per day, leaving organizations with the challenge of finding ways to store and manage data effectively, efficiently, and safely. Legato's products enable customers to make decisions about the strategic storage needs of the organization and implement solutions which will adapt easily to data growth, technology advancement, and organizational evolution."

About BP Oil

BP is one of the world's largest petroleum and petrochemicals companies. Its main activities are exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas; oil refining, marketing, supply and transportation; and manufacturing and marketing of petrochemicals. BP has major operations in Europe, the USA, Australasia and parts of Africa and is expanding its presence in other areas -- notably China, South East Asia, South America and Eastern Europe.

BP Oil is the refining and marketing arm of the British Petroleum Company p.l.c., selling and trading more than three million barrels of refined products every day. Its global network of distinctive green service stations sell not only motor spirit, diesel fuel and lubricants, but also food and other convenience goods. BP Oil also supplies fuels to almost every sector of industry and commerce and is one of the largest marketers of aviation fuels and marine fuels and lubricants.

About Legato Systems

Legato Systems, Inc. develops, markets and supports an integrated set of enterprise storage management software products for heterogeneous client/server computing environments. The company's solution is selected by large customers around the world because of its reliability, platform-independence and unique ability to seamlessly integrate with existing and future computing environments. Legato's storage management software has become the recognized de-facto standard with the largest installed base, representing over 15,000 customers, protecting more than 2,000,000 systems. 23 of the world's largest system and applications vendors have chosen Legato's software as their preferred storage management solution for their customers, including Banyan, Compaq/Digital, Compaq/Tandem, Data General, Fujitsu/Amdahl, Fujitsu/ICL, Groupe Bull, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Informix, NEC, Netscape, Network Appliance, Nihon-Unisys, Oracle, Siemens Nixdorf, Silicon Graphics, Sony and Sun Microsystems. The company's NetWorker, BusinesSuite and GEMS products are also licensed, resold, or endorsed by other major vendors, including: BMC Software, Computer Associates, IBM/Tivoli, Microsoft Corporation, MTI, Novell and SAP. Legato's home page address on the World Wide Web is http://www.legato.com.

Note to Editors: Legato NetWorker is a registered trademark, and NetWorker Archive, NetWorker HSM, ClientPak, SmartClient, SmartMedia, StorSuite, BusinesSuite, Power Edition, Legato Data Backup Utility, Legato GEMS, and OpenTape are trademarks of Legato Systems, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. All other product, trademark, company, or service names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

    CONTACT: Legato Systems
              Suzan Woods, 650/812-6112
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