Confluence Networks Extends Executive Team; Storage Company Builds Foundation With Seasoned Vets from Cisco, Sun, IBM, Nortel.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 22, 2001

Confluence Networks, a privately held developer of next-generation storage networking systems, announced today the addition of two key executives to its management team. Mark Davis was appointed senior vice president of marketing and business development, and Rob Seim was named vice president of finance and controller. The two business executives join the company's three technical leaders, founder Nilesh Shah, vice president of software engineering Kumar Gajjar, and vice president of technology Chan Ng.

Confluence board member and Hitachi Data Systems' COO Dave Roberson remarked, "It is exceedingly rare that startups so quickly bring together a team of this caliber. Each of the executives at Confluence brings a stellar track record in enterprise storage, storage management and/or networking. The company truly is a confluence of brilliant ideas and people."

Mark Davis, responsible for marketing and business development at Confluence, played a key role in growing Sun Microsystems' (Nasdaq:SUNW) storage business from near zero to becoming the largest Unix storage provider. He also served as vice president at Storage Technology Corp. (NYSE:STK), and has a strong track record in growing startup companies, having served as a top executive at storage networking company ConvergeNet Technologies, which was purchased by Dell Computer (Nasdaq:DELL) for $340 million in 1999, and at Evolve Software (Nasdaq:EVLV) where he played a key role in its IPO in late 2000.

Rob Seim, the new head of the company's financial organization, was most recently CFO of a privately held startup. Before that, he provided strong financial management in stints as vice president at both Nortel (Nasdaq:NRTL) and Bay Networks, and also served as controller of IBM's (NYSE:IBM) multi-billion dollar worldwide disk drive business. Seim's experience spans a broad range of accounting and financial disciplines including business model restructuring, financial control systems, process and quality improvement, and merger and acquisition integration.

Confluence Networks was founded in 2000 by CEO Nilesh Shah, a serial entrepreneur who identified an impending problem: that complex, multi-vendor Storage Area Networks (SANs) would grow too large to be effectively managed by existing approaches. Armed with 15 years of networking expertise gained at companies such as Yago, a Silicon Valley switch-router company co-founded by Shah and later sold to Cabletron (now Riverstone Networks, Nasdaq:RSTN), Cisco (Nasdaq:CSCO), Kalpana Systems and Ultra Network Technologies, Shah is applying his networking know-how to critical storage management challenges.

Shortly after founding Confluence, Shah was joined by storage gurus Kumar Gajjar and Chan Ng, holders of dozens of patents in enterprise-class storage and storage networking. Gajjar, who played a key role in the development of the industry's first commercial fault-tolerant RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) system in the late 1980's, went on to deliver more industry-leading RAID systems at MTI (Nasdaq:MTIC) before eventually co-founding SmartSAN Systems, an innovative storage network router company that was acquired by Gadzoox Networks (NYSE:ZOOX). Gajjar also held key engineering and management positions at Auspex Systems (Nasdaq:ASPX) and Seagate Technologies (Nasdaq:SGAT).

Like Gajjar, Chan Ng has a long record of successful innovation in enterprise storage. In 21 years at IBM, Ng's career spanned disk drive technology, mainframe and open systems RAID, and storage area networks (SANs). Ng was one of the key architects of IBM's renowned "Shark" Enterprise Storage Server, and most recently played a key role in architecting IBM's SAN strategy. Ng is the recipient of numerous IBM technical excellence awards.

"This is the strongest team in the explosive storage networking industry," said Shah. "The Confluence team knows what it takes to create real solutions to difficult storage management challenges. This team has built before, and will deliver again, highly successful products that result in highly successful business performance."

About Confluence Networks

Confluence Networks, Inc. is mounting an offensive on perhaps the biggest opportunity in enterprise computing infrastructure: dramatically simplifying the management of Storage Area Networks (SANs) by creating a scalable, virtual, managed storage pool. The company, led by a team of entrepreneurial executives with outstanding track records in the storage and networking worlds, is developing highly differentiated technology to enable the cost effective implementation of scalable, heterogeneous SANs.

A privately held company with headquarters in Milpitas, California and a satellite R&D team in Nashua, New Hampshire, Confluence is backed by Redpoint Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, Quantum Technology Ventures and Beachhead Capital. Confluence is on the web at www.confluencenetworks.com.