Experience Music Project Deploys 15 Terabytes of Isilon IQ to Store and Deliver Digital Music and History; Isilon Systems Sponsorship Rocks the House at World Renowned Music Museum.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 2003

Isilon Systems(R), the premier provider of intelligent clustered storage systems for digital content, and Experience Music Project (EMP) today announced a multi-year sponsorship agreement that makes the Isilon IQ network storage system the heart of EMP's state of the art storage and delivery infrastructure. EMP has purchased and installed Isilon IQ to store terabytes of audio, video, images and graphical content used throughout EMP every day -- enough total music and video to fill more than 19,000 physical CDs.

EMP, the world's premier popular music museum, founded by investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and designed by architect Frank O. Gehry, streams 500 gigabytes of video and 100 gigabytes of audio every day to multimedia exhibits and displays located throughout the 140,000 square foot museum. Current EMP interactive and interpretive exhibits include the popular "Sweet Home Chicago: Big City Blues" and the Annie Leibovitz "American Music" photography gallery.

EMP selected Isilon IQ for five clear advantages unseen in competitive storage systems:

1) SAN-level performance and scalability with NAS-level simplicity, 2) high availability clustered architecture, 3) single namespace and single point of management resulting from the OneFS(TM) distributed file system, 4) ability to store and deliver multiple file formats to many distribution points, and 5) the ability to seamlessly integrate into EMP's existing infrastructure which includes Gigabit Ethernet and a mix of Windows, Macintosh, and Linux servers and clients.

"As a nonprofit cultural institution, EMP greatly values strategic sponsorship opportunities like our Isilon relationship -- it's a win-win situation for both of us," said Brian Beaumont, director of technology for EMP. "With a distributed file system and clustered architecture, Isilon IQ provides us with a high availability storage system that greatly simplifies our infrastructure and enables us to reduce the time and costs spent managing and maintaining our storage systems. We looked at several storage solutions, including SAN, NAS and direct attached systems, and Isilon IQ combines the best of what we need to keep EMP's audio and video playing every hour of every day that the museum is open."

Easy and Reliable for the Most Valuable Digital Content Assets

EMP uses some of the most advanced and innovative technologies to power the video, music and photos in the museum's exhibits and to showcase the 120,000 artifacts in the museum's collection. EMP uses Isilon IQ as shared central storage in the content creation process, where photos, videos and audio clips are edited and encoded. EMP also uses Isilon IQ as a fast disk-to-disk backup system for the museum's digital content. Experience Science Fiction, co-locating with EMP, and opening in June 2004, will use this Isilon technology as well.

"We are thrilled to partner with EMP to showcase our technology. EMP offers some of the rarest audio and video content in the world, from in-depth interviews with music industry legends to classic never before seen concert footage," said Steve Goldman, president and chief executive officer of Isilon Systems. "From our first meeting with EMP, we discussed storage challenges and saw that the solutions they needed were exactly the ones Isilon delivers. With the most impressive display of music-related multimedia in the world, EMP is a great new customer and we are excited to work closely with them in the years to come."

Introduced publicly in October 2003, Isilon IQ is a high performance clustered storage system that combines an intelligent distributed file system with modular industry standard hardware to deliver unmatched simplicity and scalability. Isilon's OneFS distributed file system eliminates islands of storage by creating a single namespace and enables customers to grow both storage capacity and performance linearly. The system was designed specifically for high growth, high throughput applications, such as those in film production, digital music, digital photography, content delivery, bio IT and life sciences, and oil & gas exploration. Isilon customers such as Paramount, Corbis, Digital FilmWorks and ResearchChannel are storing hundreds of terabytes of digital content on Isilon IQ.

About Isilon Systems

Isilon is the premier provider of intelligent clustered storage systems for digital content. Isilon's initial product, Isilon IQ, is a high performance clustered storage system that combines an intelligent distributed file system with modular industry standard hardware to deliver unmatched simplicity and scalability. Isilon IQ was designed for digital content and large data-intensive markets, such as media and entertainment, digital imaging, content delivery, bio IT and oil and gas. The Seattle-based company is financed by Sequoia Capital, Atlas Venture and Madrona Venture Group. For more information, visit http://www.isilon.com.

About Experience Music Project

Dedicated to exploring creativity and innovation in American popular music, Experience Music Project is a 21st Century museum that strives to capture and reflect the essence of rock 'n' roll, its roots in jazz, soul, gospel, country and the blues, as well as rock music's influence on hip-hop, punk and other recent genres. Patrons can make their own music, see and learn about rare artifacts and memorabilia from EMP's collection of more than 120,000 items, explore various musical milestones within unique interpretive exhibits, feel the power of the creative force by listening to musicians tell their own stories, and discover the power and joy of music in all its forms. Founded by investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen, under the direction of co-founder Jody Patton and designed by architect Frank O. Gehry, the 140,000 square foot museum provides visitors a musical experience unparalleled anywhere in the world. A 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EMP is online at www.emplive.com.

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