EARTH SCIENCES

LOS ANGELES, CA -- DataDirect Networks, a leading provider of the world's highest performance storage networking appliances, today announced that Schumann Printers, Inc. has achieved a 600% productivity and workflow increase by implementing just one DataDirect Silicon Storage Appliance. Using one Silicon Storage Appliance (S2A) at the heart of their pre-press network environment has allowed substantial total cost of ownership (TCO) reductions and increased return on investment for the Wisconsin-based printer. "We were searching for a storage networking solution that would surpass our existing SAN installation in the areas of workflow efficiency, performance and reliability," Jack Schumann, owner, Schumann Printers, Inc., said "With DataDirect Networks' Silicon Storage Appliance we found a simple-to-deploy and easy-to-manage solution that allows us to substantially increase our company's productivity." Prior to the implementation of DataDirect's Silicon Storage Appliance architecture, a typical day at Schumann would see 300 proofs traverse the pre-press workflow. Now, with the Silicon Storage Appliance at the heart of their operations, Schumann can now generate more than 1800 proofs each day - a 600% (6x) productivity improvement by implementing just one Silicon Storage Appliance. Using DataDirect appliance technology, Schumann also now can easily scale their storage network to meet future demands. "The ability to achieve a 600% productivity gain by using a Silicon Storage Appliance allows us to expand our business to meet future demand, without increasing our staff," Schumann continued. "When you measure return on investment brought about by DataDirect's Silicon Storage Appliance based on productivity gain alone, the Silicon Storage Appliance was a very wise and compelling decision for our company." The Silicon Storage Appliance provides Schumann with greatly increased reliability, delivering high data and application availability to bring a smooth workflow. Using the Silicon Storage Appliance, Schumann was able to reuse much of their existing network environment, increasing the company's return on investment and lowering their TCO. And the application acceleration brought about by the Silicon Storage Appliance architecture performance allows a far greater volume of work per day to be processed for print. These benefits provide Schumann an immediate, concrete return on investment in addition to allowing for future pre-press expansion. "All businesses, regardless of industry, now face the challenge of doing more with less," Mark McLane, vice president worldwide sales, DataDirect Networks, said. "Our customers want to extend their current infrastructures and increase productivity as a business imperative, and our Silicon Storage Appliance can help businesses reach these bottom line goals simply and easily." Appliances Created to Accelerate Application Performance, Simplify Storage Networks DataDirect Networks has created the highly scalable, simple-to-deploy and easy-to-manage Silicon Storage Appliances to accelerate application performance, simplify information management, and lower total costs of ownership. With each Silicon Storage Appliance's ability to supply an aggregate bandwidth of 800 megabytes per second and support up to 512 servers and 180 Terabytes of storage, the Silicon Storage Appliance creates performance and scalability benefits for businesses. Silicon Storage Appliance technology allows businesses to accelerate their applications, providing data at least three times faster than existing Storage Area Networking (SAN) solutions and ten times faster than Network Attached Storage (NAS) technology. The acceleration of data to applications and users -- simply and easily -- allows DataDirect Networks' customers to consolidate their storage; the Silicon Storage Appliance technology allows management of up to 100 Terabytes by a single system administrator, providing 10x lower total cost of ownership. An application story describing Schumann's use of the Silicon Storage Appliance is available at www.datadirectnet.com/products/customer_stories/index.html