Optovia Announces SpanExpress Optical Line System for Enterprise Business Continuance and Disaster Recovery Deployments; Patented Technology Eliminates Costly Intermediate Amplification Sites between Primary and Secondary Data Centers.

ACTON, Mass. -- Optovia(TM) Corporation, a leading optical line systems company providing solutions for telecommunications carriers, cable system operators, and corporate enterprises, today announced the availability of the SpanExpress(TM) optical amplifier solution. SpanExpress enables enterprises such as finance and banking, insurance, healthcare, and government to implement business continuance and disaster recovery (BC/DR) strategies utilizing storage area networks (SANs) and optical transport technologies to locate data centers up to 200 kilometers away without the cost, complexity and risks associated with mid-span amplification. SpanExpress is a deployment-ready, rack-mountable, optical line system that is utilized between the storage devices at the local and remote data centers.

As enterprises persevere in their quest for guaranteed application availability over wide area networks (WANs), they are forced to consider the risks associated with the loss of a data center. Recent man-made and natural disasters, as well as the rapid proliferation of compliance mandates and standards regulations have driven enterprises to adopt even more aggressive disaster recovery and business continuance strategies. As the enterprise's ability to recover quickly from an unplanned outage becomes a critical competitive differentiator in today's marketplace, enterprises are growing increasingly frustrated in their BC/DR efforts due to the constraints imposed by application and network transport limitations.

Legacy optical transport solutions rely on the optical signal being boosted periodically along the transmission line and use optical amplifiers to restore signals to their original characteristics when replicating storage traffic over extended distances. The optical signal typically needs to be amplified somewhere in the middle of the span at distances in excess of 80 to 100km, leading to additional capital and operational expenditures, and a less secure and reliable network. However, by using Optovia's SpanExpress for the transport of SAN connectivity, the need for costly and problematic mid-span optical amplifiers is completely eliminated.

"Customers tell us that the level of investment required to build, operate, and maintain secondary data centers further away than 100 kilometers is prohibitive due to the cost and complexity of deploying mid-span optical amplifiers, the total cost of ownership for the network components, and the degree of network availability and reliability required," said Niall Robinson, vice president of marketing for Optovia. "SpanExpress was designed to meet these challenges and accelerate the investment payback period."

"Compliance initiatives and the explosive growth of digital content are driving the adoption of storage replication and remote backup over wide area networks," said Brian Garrett, an industry analyst with the Enterprise Strategy Group. "DWDM optical technology is increasingly being used to deliver the high throughput and low latency needed for storage extension at long-reach distances of up to 200 kilometers. Optovia's SpanExpress significantly reduces the cost, complexity and risk associated with deploying long-reach DWDM solutions."

Optovia's SpanExpress addresses key infrastructure deployment challenges for high-capacity BC/DR networks, including:

1. Reduced EFI&T complexity and costs

Working with a dark fiber provider to engineer and deploy mid-span amplification sites can be costly and complex, however, with SpanExpress, these costs and complexities are eliminated. Using SpanExpress, the dark fiber provider merely needs to provide fiber between the two data center locations.

2. Simpler negotiations with fiber providers enables greater "deployment freedom"

Many times the locations available for mid-span amplification sites are limited, and thus can restrict network designs as enterprises negotiate with dark fiber providers. Deploying SpanExpress to eliminate the mid-span site requirements, enterprises are given more flexibility in their network designs, and as a result, gain greater bargaining power to secure a cost-effective solution from a dark fiber provider.

3. Increased network security and reliability

With traditional mid-span amplification, enterprise-owned amplifiers are installed in shared carrier facilities in remote locations. In the event of a network outage, this setup causes reduced network reliability and security as it may be problematic to access these facilities to service the equipment. With SpanExpress, 100% of the optical equipment resides in the two enterprise-owned and managed data center facilities, greatly simplifying ongoing operations, and increasing reliability and security.

4. Reduced operational expense

Dark fiber providers typically charge enterprises a Monthly Recurring Charge (MRC) for both the rack space and the power for mid-span amplifier sites. By eliminating the mid-span sites, SpanExpress eliminates the MRC operational expense, thereby greatly reducing the Total Cost of Ownership of the transport network.

About Optovia Corporation

Optovia Corporation is a leading developer of optical transport subsystems for telecommunications carriers, cable provider networks, and corporate enterprise applications. The company's patented optical line systems provide significant capital and operational savings and performance benefits over existing amplification products and technologies. For more information, please visit www.optovia.com.

(C) 2006 Optovia Corporation. Optovia, Hut-Skip and SpanExpress are trademarks of Optovia Corporation.

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