Certance First to Ship Industry-Leading LTO Ultrium-Generation 3 Tape Drives.

COSTA MESA, Calif. -- Certance CL 800 Delivers 800 GB Capacity, 490 GB/hr Performance and Certance-Exclusive Reliability Features Providing LTO Open Format Advantages to Today's Large Businesses and Enterprises

Certance LLC (http://www.certance.com/), a world leader in innovative, cost-effective data protection solutions for companies of all sizes, announced today immediate general availability of CL 800 solutions, its third-generation LTO Ultrium-format product offering. Availability of CL 800 broadens Certance's LTO Ultrium product offering, delivering the capacity, performance and reliability required by large businesses and the enterprise. LTO Ultrium tape drive shipments held a greater than 2:1 ship-share lead over the SDLT format in 2003 according to a Gartner Dataquest report: Tape Drive Market Shares, 2003 (March 24, 2004).

"Certance is pleased to introduce the first LTO Ultrium 3 product choices to large and enterprise users requiring the next generation of LTO Ultrium technology to meet the demands of rapidly growing data storage requirements," stated Ryan Malone, senior product marketing manager for LTO Ultrium solutions at Certance. "Our introduction of CL 800 solutions represents a major milestone for the company and an opportunity to provide solutions to our customers that are rich with Certance-exclusive reliability features and LTO technology products that provide users with open format advantages and lowest total cost of ownership value."

CL 800 - Capacity and Performance for Large Businesses and the Enterprise

Doubling the capacity of LTO Ultrium 2 tape drives, the Certance CL 800 provides up to 800 Gbytes of data protection per cartridge, with backup speeds of up to 490 Gbytes per hour. Targeted at large businesses and the enterprise with pricing starting at $5,899, the CL 800 provides a clear alternative to proprietary formats such as SDLT 600 by delivering a 33% capacity and 88% performance advantage. Providing an opportunity for customers to leverage their previous media investments, CL 800 writes to both LTO-3 and LTO-2 media and reads from LTO-3, LTO-2 and LTO-1 media formats. Available in 5.25-inch full-height internal, desktop and 2U rackmount configurations, the CL 800 comes with a fully licensed version of BakBone NetVault backup software. Certance plans to support Write Once, Read Many (WORM) functionality in its CL 800 solutions for affordable, unalterable data storage related to current regulatory compliance requirements.

Certance-Exclusive Features Provide Highest Reliability

Certance CL 800 combines the proven performance and reliability of Linear Tape-Open (LTO) technology with Certance-exclusive reliability features to provide the most reliable midrange tape drive available today.

--MediaShield extends the media life to over 500 full backups.

--13-Speed Transfer ensures tape streaming and eliminates shoeshining by automatically matching the host's transfer speed to one of thirteen speeds.

--Dynamic Powerdown protects the drive and data cartridge in the event of a power loss.

--SmartVerify concurrently verifies all data written to the tape, virtually eliminating the need for traditional verify pass during backup operations, thus reducing the required backup window.

To learn more about the Certance CL 800, visit our website, http://www.certance.com/news/lto3.

Certance CL 800 is available at all Certance-authorized distributors, including Bell Micro, D&H, Ingram Micro, Synnex and Tech Data. CL 800 data protection solutions are also available through the company's worldwide network of channel partners and systems integrators.

About Certance

Certance is a worldwide market leader providing the broadest range of tape backup products and data protection solutions with a commitment to innovative, cost-effective data protection for companies of all sizes. Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Certance produces a full array of data protection solutions, including LTO Ultrium; DDS/DAT; Travan tape technologies; and DPA-disk-based technologies, including CP 3100 data protection solutions. With more than 12 million tape devices installed worldwide, the Company designs, manufactures and markets a wide range of solutions to meet the backup, restore and archive needs of virtually every platform from notebooks and PCs to enterprise servers. Certance can be found around the globe and at http://www.certance.com/.

Certance and the Certance logo are trademarks of Certance LLC. Linear Tape-Open, LTO, the LTO logo, Ultrium and the Ultrium logo are U.S. trademarks of Certance, HP and IBM in the U.S., other countries or both. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are owned by their respective owners. Certance reserves the right to change, without notice, product offerings or specifications. (C) Copyright 2004 by Certance LLC. All Rights Reserved.