ExaGrid Systems Announces Industry's First Grid Protected Storage for Backup and Disaster Recovery.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

WESTBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 17, 2003

Integrates Storage and Comprehensive Data Protection in a Single, Standards-Based Solution; Company Announces CuraGen Corporation, Massachusetts General Hospital and The First Years as Beta Customers

ExaGrid Systems, an emerging company providing reliable data recovery through Grid Protected Storage, today launched the company and its approach to addressing the cost and complexity associated with ineffective storage, backup and disaster recovery.

While the continued growth of online data and evolving regulatory compliance issues have elevated the importance of data recovery and protection, current solutions are woefully inadequate. IT budgets and resources are at a premium and yet current approaches to backup and recover data require many independent products that have to be separately licensed and managed. Additionally, many organizations continue to rely on backup to tape, which is proven to provide low data integrity and can take weeks to recover from a disaster - if at all. Restore failure rates can be as high as 70 percent, and costly backup strategies can result in 25 times over-replication. Cost has also prevented many organizations from even implementing a disaster recovery plan.

Grid Computing has developed strong momentum within enterprises providing benefits that include shared compute resources, distributed networked computing, resource independence and scalability and reliability. Leveraging these benefits, ExaGrid has brought the concepts of Grid Computing to storage and developed an intelligent, distributed, virtualized, disk-based storage solution that - via a Protection Policy Engine - provides:

-- End-to-end backup and restore

-- Full and immediate disaster recovery (minutes not weeks)

-- File corruption protection

-- Onsite/Offsite Vaulting 

-- Automatic data migration/Hierarchical Storage Management

-- Archiving and ILM

The unique value of the Grid Protected Storage approach will be of particular appeal to organizations with heavy amounts of file data in industries that include healthcare, biotechnology, financial services, manufacturing and engineering. With products already in beta, ExaGrid today also announced product trials with CuraGen Corporation, Massachusetts General Hospital and The First Years.

"The First Years is a leading developer of innovative products aimed at better parenting. To remain competitive in the CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) marketplace, our data needs to be immediately accessible," said Ron Cardone, vice president of IS for The First Years. "What interests us most about the Grid Protected Storage approach is that it is a single cost-effective solution to automatically manage and proactively maintain data integrity and recoverability so that critical business information is available on demand."

Grid Protected Storage: Intelligent, Distributed Storage Utility

"While innovation in the storage industry abounds, backup and recovery solutions remain dependent on outdated tape technologies," said Jim Pownell, president and co-founder of ExaGrid Systems. "Backup to tape is still plagued by issues of lack of data integrity, poor management, instability and offsite vaulting that makes the tapes inaccessible for immediate recovery should disaster strike. Combine that with the requirement for multiple, independent products that may or may not interoperate, and we knew there had to be a better approach. After extensive research, and based on our own experience managing more than 50 data centers, we developed Grid Protected Storage to eliminate the complexity of storing and protecting data."

ExaGrid's intellectual property - with multiple patents pending - is in the company's innovative software that enables Grid Protected Storage. Leveraging commodity level hardware and significant reductions in the cost of processors and disks, ExaGrid has created a grid-based storage utility enabling multiple storage servers, connected in multiple locations, to backup and protect each other. To provide Grid Protected Storage, ExaGrid combines standard network file protocols such as NFS, CIFS and FTP with the Company's Protection Policy Engine to deliver a full suite of data protection functions.

With highly intelligent, modular components, the Grid Protected Storage approach is:

-- Integrated and standards-based: combines storage and

protection to greatly reduce the need for multiple backup

licenses, servers, tape drives, offsite vaulting services and

disaster recovery systems, while also integrating with

existing systems/software from companies such as LEGATO,

Veritas and Oracle;

-- Automated: driven by customer selected policies, performs file

versioning, continuous file integrity checking/repair, self

healing configuration/notification, automated backup

compliance notification and data compression/compaction for

space optimization; and

-- Efficient: distributes shared repositories in a grid-based

configuration to eliminate islands of storage and any single

point of failure, while also providing a global view of

repositories/resources.

"The storage industry is trending heavily toward modular systems that are robust enough to replace what has come before, but flexible enough to integrate with it," said Steve Duplessie, founder and senior analyst for Enterprise Storage Group. "By focusing on reliable data recovery, ExaGrid is addressing the segment of the storage infrastructure that is most sorely in need of a technology refresh. Their approach holds promise as a way to let customers break free of arcane and unreliable tape backup, while leveraging the existing server and storage infrastructure to provide a more scalable and effective alternative."

About ExaGrid

Founded in 2002, ExaGrid Systems provides reliable data recovery through Grid Protected Storage. Significantly lowering the cost and complexity of adequately storing and protecting data, ExaGrid is the first company to apply Grid Computing to storage and to integrate storage and data protection in a single solution. ExaGrid has assembled a world class management team with expertise in storage and data protection from organizations that include EMC, StorageNetworks, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, LiveVault, Emulex and Network Appliance. The company received $8.5 million in funding from top tier investors Highland Capital Partners and Sigma Partners. ExaGrid will announce its products in the first quarter of 2004. ExaGrid Systems can be reached at www.exagrid.com or by calling 508-898-2872.