Exabyte launches new program to help VARs build tape automation practice and capitalize on strong new market.

Responding to the strong market demand for its family of tape automation products, Exabyte Corporation (OTCBB:EXBT), an innovator in tape backup, restore and archival systems, recently announced a new Program to help VARs establish a Tape Automation Practice. The Program, complete with an opportunity analysis, technical training and sales support, is designed to help its global network of resellers expand revenues and deepen relationships with customers by addressing the growing demand within the SMB market for automated backup and restore solutions.

"Traditionally automation has targeted large business and high-volume backup applications. With Exabyte's new SMB class of autoloaders, small- and medium-sized businesses can finally enjoy the same benefits as larger enterprises, such as increased reliability and fully automated backup," stated Kerry Brock, Vice President of Marketing, Exabyte. "With this new Program, VARs have the opportunity to dramatically improve their SMB customers' levels of data protection and disaster recovery, thus forging closer business relationships through on-going added-value consulting."

According to Brock, the role of tape is evolving because more and more SMBs want to automate the backup process. This trend is driven by three primary factors: the annual doubling of enterprise server data, the rapid increase in servers sold in rack-mountable form factors, and the continuing need of IT departments to do more with less. "The natural evolution of backup and restore leads directly to automation," adds Brock.

In the past, only larger businesses could afford automation. However, due to the evolving needs of the marketplace and dramatic advancements by Exabyte, reliable automation is now available to any size company. With over 98 percent of U.S. businesses employing fewer than 50 people--the largest market segment by far--hundreds of thousands of business are seeking more efficient, more reliable means to store data. Now, with the cost of automation close to the cost of individual tape drives--automation is now affordable to the masses for the first time. Leading analysts see this as an important trend and are adjusting their forecast to reflect the significant move to automation.

"Traditionally, small organizations have had limited resources to devote to managing their critical data," said Robert Amatruda, research manager at IDC. "Exabyte now offers cost-effective, scalable tape automation solutions for customers that may only have budget for a single tape drive."

With the ever-increasing growth of data and the ever-shrinking backup time window, Exabyte recognizes the growing market trend toward automation. As a result, it is helping VARs build a Tape Automation Practice to more effectively bring the following break-through tape automation products to the SMB marketplace:

--Exabyte's VXA-2 PacketLoader 1x10 (one drive, 10 slots) with 1.6 TB capacity (compressed), 1u form factor, bar code reader, direct-attach SCSI, Ethernet port for remote management, and all the benefits of Exabyte's award-winning VXA PacketTechnology that reads and writes data in packets--just like the Internet--providing far superior restore integrity, greater capacity, and fast transfer speeds.

--Exabyte's Magnum 1x7 LTO Autoloader (one drive, 7 slots) with 2.8 TB capacity (compressed), 2u form factor, bar code reader, direct-attach SCSI, Ethernet port for remote management, and the benefits of LTO (Ultrium) technology.

Through its innovative engineering approach and streamlined manufacturing processes, Exabyte is committed to delivering easy-to-use, full-featured tape automation products to market with the best price-performance ratios in the industry, thus making automation affordable for the first time to the masses.

Exabyte, a 20-year innovator of tape storage technologies, is again leading the way with this turnkey Program for VARs and its new SMB class of autoloaders.