Diligent Technologies Breaks Economic Barriers to Implementing Enterprise-Class Disk-Based Data Protection; Delivers Solution Costing Well below Existing Backup Storage System-Tape, or Disk.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Revolutionary factoring technology radically reduces the amount and cost of physical storage required by 25 times or more

Diligent Technologies, a leading provider of enterprise data protection solutions announced at Gartner's PlanetStorage Event its ProtecTIER(TM) platform, the industry's most cost effective and scalable disk-based data protection solution on the market. Powered by HyperFactor(TM), a 'game changing' factoring technology, ProtecTIER eliminates redundant data and can effectively decrease the amount of storage required by a factor of 25 times or more.

With ProtecTIER, enterprise customers can protect more data, more effectively, enabling customers to extend retention periods on disk far more economically than with other disk-based solutions -- creating virtual online archives for secure, reliable backup & recovery. As an example, customers can now likely keep 3 months or more of backups, including fulls and incrementals, on ProtecTIER disk that is physically less storage than the disk it takes to store the original "full" on the production system. The platform will provide a single instance store for backup & recovery, archive, and compliance applications.

The first access module to the ProtecTIER platform is ProtecTIER VT, Diligent's next generation virtual tape solution for open systems. ProtecTIER VT is a scalable and robust software solution that emulates tape libraries, enabling existing backup applications to send data to the ProtecTIER platform, rather than to tape. By leveraging the power of HyperFactor, ProtecTIER VT is the first virtual tape offering to utilize technology that dramatically reduces the amount of storage required. Virtual tape has recently emerged as the easiest, most effective, most scalable method of deploying disk in the open systems data protection environment. With ProtecTIER VT, customers can capture all of the benefits of virtual tape, while radically reducing the capital costs associated with deploying large quantities of disk storage.

"At last we can say that the myth is broken. Disk-based solutions powered by ProtecTIER VT are less expensive to own and operate than tape automation," says Michael Peterson, President of Strategic Research Corporation. "I've carefully worked through the TCO for ProtecTIER and am amazed at what I see. First that the real operating cost of tape-based backup is so much higher than I recognized. I had bought into all the old arguments that $/GB and media density told the whole story around why we use tape. Well, it is a big myth. ProtecTIER VT empowers disk with a myriad of cost saving and operational benefits around protection and recovery which result in more than $15,000 per TB per year of cost savings compared to tape automation. Disk is finally a lot cheaper than tape."

"We implemented Diligent's VTF Open virtual tape solution over a year ago and have seen significant improvements in our ability to backup and recover more efficiently and without disruption to our backup operations," said a Manager, Enterprise Solutions at a leading National Grocery Retailer & Distributor customer of Diligent's. "Our backup data continues to grow quickly and Diligent's solutions have enabled us to put most of our data on disk instead of tape. With the introduction of the ProtecTIER platform with HyperFACTOR technology, we will be able to keep many more months of data online for timely recovery without expanding our current disk space and budget."

"Virtual tape technology has been awesome for slashing the backup window problem, but really doesn't do much for recovery enhancement unless it is a very short-term need," said Steve Duplessie, Founder of Enterprise Strategy Group. "Diligent's ProtecTIER platform with HyperFactor gives customers the ability to keep data on-line, on disk forever almost - which means recovery can happen real time and the economic savings can be enormous. This has been the missing link in the total required disk-based solution."

"The economic value of ProtecTIER to enterprise customers is immense. By optimizing disk capacity to yield 25 times or more effective storage, we are the first to eliminate the economic barriers that have been previously associated with deploying comprehensive disk-based data protection solutions-without compromising performance, scalability and 100% data-integrity" said Doron Kempel, Chairman & CEO of Diligent Technologies. "Our breakthrough factoring technology will not only dramatically impact backup and recovery but also provides investment protection giving customers the benefits of leveraging the same platform for all other secondary data types."

Solving the issue around the data duplication within the backup cycle is no easy task. ProtecTIER is the result of almost two years of intensive development and planning. Its cornerstone, HyperFactor, is a specially architected algorithm that was created by a cross-functional, hand-picked team that consisted of mathematics PhDs and data storage veterans. Unlike competing data factoring technologies, HyperFactor was built from the ground up and is not based on legacy algorithms like MD5 or SHA-1. HyperFactor's unique approach offers superior capacity, scalability and 100% data integrity.

ProtecTIER with HyperFactor technology takes advantage of the repetition within the backup cycle and does not require the system to store data that already exists in the disk repository. This capability significantly reduces the amount of storage required, and its savings have been measured across a range of customer scenarios. The total acquisition cost of a ProtecTIER solution is 15-30% percent lower than that of a comparable tape library; and between 50-80% lower than that of a comparable virtual tape library system.

Diligent's ProtecTIER platform changes the economics of data protection. By dramatically reducing the amount and cost of disk storage required, customers no longer need to make a painful compromise between data protection and capital expenditures. With ProtecTIER, customers can simultaneously increase data protection levels and radically reduce costs. ProtecTIER was built for the Enterprise data center. It currently scales to address 1 PB of physical storage which is equivalent to 25 PB of data, and can reach sustained throughput in excess of 200 MB per second per node. With these increased efficiencies, replicating data to disk over Wide Area Networks (WANs) for disaster recovery purposes now becomes economically feasible.

Unlike purpose built appliances that lack flexibility in component scaling, the ProtecTIER platform is architected with the ability to scale processing power, connectivity, and storage independently. With its clustering capability and unmatched scalability, ProtecTIER eliminates potential bottlenecks throughout the configuration without introducing additional management points.

Currently available in selective release, Diligent's ProtecTIER Platform is priced between $40,000 - $190,000, depending on the configuration.

About Diligent Technologies Corporation

Diligent delivers scalable, proven, enterprise-class disk-based data protection solutions. Diligent's ProtecTIER(TM) platform, powered by HyperFactor(TM), a game-changing factoring technology, enables customers to protect more data while recording less of it, all without disrupting existing policies, practices and procedures in their data center. Diligent's solutions and professional services are available through its reseller and partner channels along with sales, service and R&D support located worldwide. Information on Diligent Technologies is available on the World Wide Web at www.diligent.com, tel: [phone] or e-mail: [e-mail].

Note to Editors: Diligent Technologies logo, ProtecTIER and HyperFactor are trademarks of Diligent Technologies Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.