SCE Federal Credit Union Banks on StoneFly Backup Advantage for Protecting Member Data While Supporting Surge in Digital Imaging.

SAN DIEGO -- Leading Credit Union Dramatically Accelerates Data Backups and Restores with Integrated Solution that Lowers TCO, Eases Management and Increases Efficiency

StoneFly Networks(R), Inc., the leading supplier of integrated data protection and management systems to value-oriented small- and medium-sized enterprises, today announced that SCE Federal Credit Union, a Southern California-based credit union with 42,000 members and $350 million in total assets, has deployed StoneFly Backup Advantage(TM) (SBA) to safeguard its critical member information. The installation of SBA, a turnkey IP SAN with industry-leading backup and recovery software, has enabled the credit union to accelerate its backup and recovery operations considerably while taking advantage of flexible and expandable IP SAN-based storage management.

SCE Federal Credit Union relies on leading-edge technology to fuel its delivery of value-added services, including a variety of online banking and customer-service capabilities. To that end, the company embarked on a major imaging project to convert all member profiles to digital data, which created a spike in storage while intensifying the demand for enterprise-class data protection and advanced storage management. Previously, it took at least eight hours to conduct a full backup of critical customer data using Veritas BackUp Exec. The lengthy procedure prevented SCE Federal Credit Union from backing up any data other than its most critical customer files, especially since the process often encroached into the daily production environment. Additionally, it typically took up to 48 hours to restore data because the backup tape had to be retrieved from the company's offsite storage provider.

In seeking a faster and more efficient backup and recovery solution, SCE Federal Credit Union evaluated both Fibre Channel SAN and IP SAN-based alternatives. According to Tony Salse, director of IT for SCE Federal Credit Union, the StoneFly IP SAN technology offered the most compelling value proposition on the market. "With SBA, we were able to leverage the performance benefits of disk-based backup at half the price of competing Fibre Channel SANs," he says. "Our ability to automate backup and recovery easily while scaling the turnkey system quickly lowered total cost of ownership even further."

Using SBA's disk-to-disk (D2D) capabilities, SCE Federal Credit Union has reduced its backup window by 80 percent. Full backups of all data, including operating systems and server configurations, now can be completed in less than two hours. Restores also have been improved dramatically, taking minutes to retrieve vital data from disk-based backups. Furthermore, the company takes advantage of flexible D2D storage management capabilities to retain backups longer and ease compliance with credit-union industry regulations.

According to Jeff Johnson, network administrator for SCE Federal Credit Union, switching to SBA has slashed storage administration time and effort by 75 percent. "Setting up new storage on-the-fly and performing backup/recovery operations are so intuitive and easy with SBA," he explains. "I now sleep a lot easier and can focus on more strategic technology initiatives -- with more peace of mind knowing that all our data is completely protected."

StoneFly also has created new opportunities for streamlining SCE Federal Credit Union's storage environment. For example, the company consolidated its Exchange server storage onto the IP SAN, freeing up to three times more space on its existing email server. As a result, the company can offer bigger mailboxes to its staff without having to purchase an additional server. SBA's expandable foundation also makes it ideal for supporting other storage-related projects, including email archiving and replicating data to a remote SAN for disaster recovery purposes.

"More and more companies like SCE Federal Credit Union are adopting SBA's expandable, turnkey approach to address diverse and rapidly expanding requirements, including storage consolidation, provisioning, replication as well as backup and recovery," says Bob Peyser, vice president of marketing at StoneFly Networks. "The benefits they enjoy include increased functionality, greater levels of regulatory compliance and improved storage ROI."

StoneFly's robust data management and protection solutions already support more than one petabyte of storage in field-proven installations nationwide. The company's award-winning products are well suited for meeting the specialized storage demands of various vertical markets, including insurance, medical, manufacturing, financial services, retail, government and education.

Recently, StoneFly released ValueSAN, a low-cost IP SAN solution with a starting price of less than $10,000 and a modular foundation that can be expanded to incorporate additional storage capacity as well as sophisticated data protection functionality. ValueSAN also offers a seamless migration path to a fully featured SBA system, with StoneFly Replicator(R) asynchronous mirroring or StoneFly Replicator(R) CDP, an application-aware continuous data protection (CDP) product.

About SCE Federal Credit Union

SCE Federal Credit Union was founded in 1952 and has a history of solid financial performance and member satisfaction. SCEF has grown over the decades to become one of the strongest financial institutions in America. For the 15th consecutive year, Bauer Financial Reports, Inc. has given SCE Federal Credit Union its highest possible Five Star Rating, placing the company among the top five percent of all credit unions nationwide in terms of financial stability.

About StoneFly Networks, Inc.

StoneFly Networks(R), Inc., founded in April 2000 and based in San Diego, is the leading supplier of integrated data protection and management systems to value-oriented small and medium enterprises. StoneFly Networks pioneered low cost storage networks, actively participating in the development of the iSCSI (Internet small computer system interface) standard that enabled SANs to be deployed using low cost Ethernet. The award-winning StoneFly Business Advantage(TM) applications suite and StoneFly Network Storage Platform deliver the best value, scalability and total cost of ownership available. StoneFly Networks is an active member of the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). The company is also an active, long-standing member of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which developed the iSCSI standard. For more information, please visit www.stonefly.com.

StoneFly Networks, Storage Concentrator, StoneFly Replicator, StoneFly Reflection, StoneFly Backup Advantage, StoneFly Replicator CDP and ValueSAN are trademarks or registered trademarks and the property of StoneFly Networks, Inc. All other company and product names contained herein are property of their respective owners.