Columbia Data Products Licenses NAS Data Protection to Microsoft Corporation For Inclusion In Server Appliance Kit.

Business Editors/Technology Writers

ALTAMONTE SPRINGS, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 2, 2001

Columbia Data Products' Persistent Storage Manager provides key

data protections, allowing original equipment manufacturers to offer

customers a powerful new protection tool for the network attached

storage market

Columbia Data Products, Inc. (CDP) today announced that Microsoft Corp. is licensing CDP's high-availability Persistent Storage Manager (PSM) for use by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) offering Windows 2000-based server or storage appliances. PSM will be included in the Microsoft Server Appliance Kit and will be demonstrated to OEMs at Server I/O in Monterrey on February 6 & 7, 2001. CDP is committed to evolving PSM into the premier high-availability data protection software for network attached storage (NAS). PSM has been optimized to work tightly with the Windows 2000 Server Appliance Kit, ensuring a stable and secure environment that will scale to include storage management capabilities required by OEMs.

IBM and NEC are releasing NAS appliances based on the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system and CDP's PSM, creating low cost, highly redundant mission critical systems that compete with storage servers costing significantly more. With PSM, OEM's no longer have to customize unsupported operating systems in order to offer high-availability solutions. Customers benefit because these products use industry standard hardware and software platforms, thus eliminating the need to buy additional data protection hardware or software, except for archival purposes.

"Data protection is a key feature for OEMs building NAS appliances," said Keith White, director of marketing for the Embedded and Appliance Platforms Group at Microsoft. "By licensing CDP's data protection software for inclusion in the Microsoft Server Appliance Kit, server appliance manufacturers can quickly and easily bring powerful NAS appliance offerings to market."

Steve Guerra, VP Business Development for CDP said, "The licensing of PSM by Microsoft validates CDP as the leader in high-availability data protections for all Windows 2000-based NAS appliances. PSM together with Microsoft's Server Appliance Kit provides an unparalleled solution for OEM's looking to penetrate the high growth, high-availability NAS market."

Alan Welsh, President of CDP said "PSM's power, flexibility and ease-of-use affords Microsoft OEMs with all the data protections necessary to compete favorably in the NAS market. Our high-availability solution keeps data on-line and available at all times, preventing system down-time or data loss."

"Microsoft's adoption of Persistent Storage Manager marks a very strategic transition in the network age," says Michael Peterson, President of Strategic Research Corp. "Continuous access to data is the key to high availability operations. By embedding PSM, Microsoft has embraced an essential and proven element of data center-class operations and enabled all leading server and storage appliance vendors to provide world-class solutions."

About PSM

PSM creates multiple point-in-time persistent True Images of any or all system and data volumes residing on the NAS. All persistent images survive system power loss or a planned or unplanned re-boot. Each instance of PSM seamlessly handles 250 concurrent images of up to 255 independent volumes for a total of 63,750 independent data images. Any image can be easily managed, through the Microsoft web user interface, and accessed the same as any other active volume. For disaster recovery in case of data corruption or loss, any volume can be reverted to a prior time from any persistent image, preventing any system downtime. These images are easily scheduled and administered through Microsoft's simple to use web based Server Appliance Kit (SAK). CDP's PSM is the only available technology that always has multiple backups on-line for users to retrieve their own files or just reboot to a "pre-disaster" image eliminating cumbersome, time-consuming, unreliable tape or other hardware, providing cost savings in hardware, software, and support manpower. For more info on PSM go to http://www.cdp.com.

PSM is based on CDP's market leading Open Transaction Manger (OTM) technology. OTM currently is the open file option for products such as VERITAS NetBackup, NetBackup Professional, and BackupExec. OTM's image based approach to open file protection affords users the highest level of data integrity, while eliminating the backup window completely. PSM uses the OTM concept but takes it to the next level of data protection by adding powerful data protection features that integrate tightly with Microsoft's Windows 2000 Server Appliance Kit.

About CDP

CDP, the leader in True Image storage solutions, has been enabling OEM customers with high availability solutions since 1988. From the first-ever SCSI device driver suite bundled with the Western Digital WD7000 SCSI controller, to its new PSM offering, CDP prides itself on offering robust yet simple to use storage solutions.

Note to Editors: Columbia Data Products, Persistent Storage Manger, PSM, OTM, Open Transaction Manager and True Image are trademarks of Columbia Data Products, Inc. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.