Silver Peak Systems Delivers Family of Appliances for Enterprise-Wide Centralization of Branch Office Infrastructure; Innovative Local Instance Networking Approach Overcomes Traditional Application Acceleration Pitfalls.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- Silver Peak Systems (www.silver-peak.com), a developer of enterprise-class network acceleration appliances, today announced general availability and customer deployment of its NX Series appliances. These are the first products to leverage Local Instance Networking (LIN) to allow enterprise-wide re-centralization of branch office server and storage infrastructure, enhancing enterprise-wide data security and compliance, while providing significant performance improvements over existing application acceleration approaches.

"Our business is widely distributed with offices across the world," said Grant McCormick, chief information officer at Verity. "We installed the Silver Peak NX appliances with the goal of reducing remote office server sprawl. We saw immediate benefits for multi-site software development and improved performance over the WAN of our business critical applications. We have been duly impressed with the dramatic impact the Silver Peak devices have had on our WAN bandwidth utilization, as well as the reduced need for future server deployments."

Local Instance Networking (LIN) -- A New Paradigm for Application Delivery

Local Instance Networking is a new paradigm to overcome the intrusive nature of application-specific point product approaches that were designed to accelerate performance on individual Wide Area Network (WAN) links.

"Local Instance" refers to the ability to efficiently remember information that is sent across a WAN and store this information as a "local instance" in each enterprise location. Repetitive information is delivered via the local data store, eliminating the transfer of redundant information over the WAN. To maintain scalability over very large networks, only a single local instance of information is maintained at each location.

"Network" refers to an enterprise-wide solution that functions at the network layer of the ISO model, making it transparent to all applications and transport protocols (TCP, UDP, RTP, etc). Advanced network-layer Quality of Service (QoS) and latency mitigation techniques enable local instance networking to minimize the performance challenges associated with over-subscribed network links.

"Business continuity is one of our key initiatives," said Eric Beasley, senior network administrator at Baker Hill, an Experian company. "We installed the Silver Peak NX appliances to handle our increasing disaster recovery and business continuity requirements. After deploying the Silver Peak solution, we saw immediate benefits in the form of reduced backup times and increased application performance to our disaster recovery site. After installing the Silver Peak devices into our network and seeing the results, we are believers."

Silver Peak's NX Series appliances are the first products to deliver Local Instance Networking functionality, delivering Local Area Network (LAN) performance over a WAN, while maintaining centralized control of enterprise applications. In doing so, the Silver Peak solution eliminates the need for point products, such as Wide Area File Servers (WAFS), caches and application proxies.

"Rapidly increasing security and compliance concerns as well as escalating IT costs are driving enterprises to consolidate data centers and centralize business critical applications," said Joe Skorupa, Research Director at Gartner, Inc. "However, application performance often forces companies to place servers and application infrastructure in local offices, driving up support costs. This has created a demand for products that enable the centralization of business critical applications and IT resources. The result is an application acceleration market that is expected to reach $1.5 billion this year, which is a 50 percent increase over 2004."

Silver Peak NX Series Appliances Featuring Network Memory(TM) Technology

All Silver Peak NX Series appliances are equipped with Network Memory(TM) technology, which is the cornerstone of the Silver Peak solution. With Network Memory(TM), each NX Series appliance uses advanced fingerprinting algorithms to examine all incoming and outgoing WAN traffic. Network Memory(TM) localizes information and transmits only modifications between locations while retaining the control where it belongs -- centrally.

In addition to Silver Peak's innovative Network Memory(TM) technology, NX Series appliances also contain the following enterprise-grade features:

--State of the art 64-bit architecture that delivers 155 Mbps performance in a single appliance

--Sophisticated latency and loss mitigation, including adaptive Forward Error Correction, for improved application performance

--Policy based QoS, class-based queuing and packet tagging

--Enhanced data security through disk encryption and IPsec tunneling between appliances

"The application and protocol-specific nature of most acceleration point products limits larger enterprises' ability to roll these products out other than on a tactical basis," said Jim Metzler of Ashton, Metzler & Associates. "Head end scalability -- the ability to 'fan-out' and support hundreds or even thousands of office connections -- is another concern with current approaches. By overcoming these limitations with Local Instance Networking, Silver Peak can now interface with CIO's on a strategic level, helping to drive the re-architecture and consolidation of branch office infrastructure."

Pricing and Availability:

The NX Series appliances are available immediately through select Silver Peak partners.

Current models include:

--NX-2500: 2Mb WAN bandwidth capacity; 250 GB local data store: $9,995

--NX-3500: 10Mb WAN bandwidth capacity; 500 GB local data store in a RAID configuration: $17,995

--NX-7500: 155Mb WAN bandwidth capacity; 2 TB data storage in a RAID configuration: $49,995

Please visit http://www.silver-peak.com/infocenter for more information on Local Instance Networking, Network Memory(TM) and Silver Peak's NX Series of appliances.

About Silver Peak Systems, Inc.

Founded in 2004, Silver Peak is a privately held company that develops enterprise-class network acceleration appliances that enable enterprises to re-centralize branch office infrastructure. Silver Peak's NX Series appliances leverage innovative Network Memory(TM) technology to improve application delivery. This new approach to Local Instance Networking (LIN) minimizes IT costs, provides complete application transparency, and ensures enterprise-wide scalability. Headquartered in Mountain View, California, Silver Peak is funded by Benchmark Capital and Greylock Partners. For more information, visit http://www.silver-peak.com.

NOTE: Silver Peak Systems, the Silver Peak logo, Network Memory, and Silver Peak NX-Series are trademarks of Silver Peak Systems, Inc.