EARTH SCIENCES

Digital Media Storage Pioneer Nearly Doubles Linux Terabytes Shipped: DataDirect Networks (DDN) the data infrastructure provider for the most extreme, content-intensive environments in the world, today announced that a new report from leading industry analyst firm IDC shows that for 2007 the company shipped over 35 petabytes into Linux environments, 80-percent more than in 2006. This growth put DDN into a statistical tie for second place in terabyte shipments to this segment -- up from fourth place in 2006. Linux is one of the fastest growing operating systems for storage applications, a favorite for developers of content-intensive applications such as video gaming, streaming media, and digital production. For example, Thomson Technicolor is using a Linux-based cluster file system powered by DDN's S2A storage platforms for encoding and authoring Blu-ray discs for high-profile projects such as Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean. According to the same report, DDN saw very strong growth in its OEM revenue. IDC states that "2007 also saw DDN build substantially on its relationships with SGI and IBM, growing its OEM business almost 190-percent year-over-year." According to IDC, this is a key factor in DDN's 19-percent overall year-over-year total (branded and OEM combined) revenue growth to $102.4 million. DDN also placed in the top 10 in several other categories, holding or increasing its market share compared to 2006 results. These categories include: Worldwide Disk Storage Systems, Networked Storage Terabytes Shipped Worldwide Disk Storage Systems, Fibre Channel SAN Terabytes Shipped Worldwide Disk Storage Systems, Total SAN Terabytes Shipped Worldwide Disk Storage Systems, Terabytes Shipped by Supplier "Much of companies' storage needs, today, are driven by fundamental changes in their IT and business practices, so despite current economic difficulties, the creation and storage of digital content and unstructured data continues unabated. Effectively handling the creation, production, and distribution of these new data types requires storage systems that are quite different from those used for traditional transaction-driven database access," said Richard Villars, Vice President of Storage Systems Research at IDC. "Companies like DDN that deliver storage systems with the scale and performance characteristics for next generation digital content will be in a strong position to extend their market presence and revenue streams in spite of the current economic climate." "It's clear from our moving up in market share position across a broad number of categories that DDN extreme storage solutions purpose-built for the new digital world are succeeding, while taking share away from the conventional transaction-oriented providers," said Alex Bouzari, CEO and Co-founder, DDN. "Our success is based on our ability to meet the specific needs of customers who develop and produce content-rich media for the online and entertainment worlds, as well as those who perform complex research and multi-dimensional simulation in the fields of biotechnology and energy exploration."