Bus-Tech Announces Significant Enhancements to the Mainframe Appliance for Storage; Refreshed Technology Improves Performance by More Than 35%.

BURLINGTON, Mass. -- Today, Bus-Tech(R), Inc., a leading supplier of data center connectivity products, announced significant enhancements to its leading tape-on-disk controller with the release of Mainframe Appliance for Storage (MAS) 2.0 . This release of the MAS offers a new up-to-date operating system and re-engineered tape-on-disk application software offering enhanced reliability and significantly increased performance.

Designed specifically to enhance overall performance, the MAS 2.0 is built on a new platform featuring an 800 Mhz front-side bus, Dual Symmetrical Multiple processors, an expanded 2 GByte memory, hardware RAID, and high-performance disks. Additionally, Bus-Tech's PCI-X channel technology has been updated with a higher performance PowerPC to improve performance of MAS channel activity.

Offered by EMC through the EMC Select Program, Bus-Tech provides MAS-Fx (FICON-based) and MAS-Ex (ESCON-based) as bundled solutions that work with EMC Centera content addressed storage (CAS) and EMC Celerra network attached storage (NAS). These recently released models deliver performance improvements of 35% or more compared with previous MAS models. Higher performance means greater value for customers looking to perform backups, store fixed content tape data, or replace aging 3995 optical media storage using MAS with EMC Centera or EMC Celerra.

With sixteen active tape drives, the new, faster MAS-Fx was recently tested with EMC Centera. These MAS-Fx enhancements reported an increased performance of over 35% when compared with the previous generation MAS product.

"For years Bus-Tech has offered its customer a proven cost-effective way to seamlessly access applications and data that resides on mainframe systems," said Roy Sanford, EMC Vice President, Content Addressed Storage. "This new version of the Bus-Tech MAS provides an even more attractive solution to our joint customers looking to optimize performance, reliability and manageability of their mainframe environment."

The MAS 2.0 provides enhanced mainframe connectivity by offering emulation of up to 256 tape drives and dynamic path recognition. The increased drive support allows for simplified scheduling of MAS resources used by large-scale mainframes as each controller is configured with more drives. The dynamic path recognition enhancements in MAS 2.0, enable the product to learn the FICON or ESCON channel paths to the mainframe(s) it is attached to which simplifies initial product configuration and reduces the total number of MAS controllers needed in complex environments.

"By allowing drives to be dynamically re-allocated across multiple logical partitions and mainframes as needed the MAS can more easily be configured in a complex environment," said Ralph Armstrong, Vice President of Product Management for Bus-Tech, Inc. "Companies now have access to applications and data, which reside on the mainframe at a reduced cost and significantly enhanced speed regardless of mainframe configurations, access method requirements and application specifics. The MAS is a solution to be considered by anyone looking to improve their backup and disaster recovery capabilities."

About Bus-Tech, Inc.

Bus-Tech, Inc. founded in 1987 is the industry's leading provider of state-of-the-art connectivity solution for the data center to Original Equipment Manufacturers. The company's powerful suite of adapter and platform solutions satisfy even the most rugged demands of data processing professionals for high-bandwidth, high-availability, and high-performance connectivity. With more than 15,000 installed sites worldwide, Bus-Tech is a recognized leader in the data center interconnect market. Headquartered in Burlington, MA, the company is privately held with location around the world. For more information about Bus-Tech and its products, please visit the Bus-Tech World Wide Web site at http://www.bustech.com, send email to [e-mail], or call 800-284-3172 or 781-272-8200.