ENTERTAINMENT

BlueArc Corporation, a leader in high performance, highly scalable network attached storage (NAS), announced a record number of new customers in the most recent quarter, ending December 31, 2002. These customer wins represent the company's further penetration into the broadcasting, US federal government and higher education markets. The acquisition of several new strategic accounts, combined with substantial follow-on business from existing customers, led BlueArc to expand business by more than three times that in fourth quarter 2001. During the fourth quarter, Rhythm and Hues Studios, a leading animation and visual effects studio and user of the BlueArc Si7500 SiliconServer for more than a year, purchased an additional SiliconServer for its reliability, performance, and attractive price. "We run a very data intensive business," said Mark Brown, vice president of Technology for Rhythm and Hues Studios. "When you introduce a storage system like BlueArc's SiliconServer, that is three times faster, in our environment, that is a big deal. When you are having data bottlenecks before, and they simply disappear, it makes everybody's life easier." Also in the fourth quarter, Ecast, a leader in the secure delivery and management of digital content to consumers in both the in- and out-of-home marketplaces, deployed two BlueArc SiliconServers to meet the demands of their broadband content delivery network. "BlueArc provided a very competitive network attached storage offering," said Tom Pigoski, Ecast's vice president of Engineering. "Ecast currently delivers over 20,000 legal music downloads per day from an ever-increasing library of tracks, so our ability to consistently deliver music files to customers is critical. For this reason, we chose BlueArc's SiliconServer for both our development and production environments due to the product's high performance and ability to scale with the Ecast platform as storage and throughput needs grow. After analyzing the current options on the market, we felt the BlueArc solution offered the best combination of price for performance, service and support." "Rapid adoption of our SiliconServers is additional proof that customers realize the benefits of BlueArc's accelerated network architecture over traditional software-based NAS providers," said Gianluca Rattazzi, BlueArc Chairman and CEO. "We've broadened our customer base in the broadcasting, education and federal sectors, launched key partner and service initiatives and expanded our product line to support the growing demand from our enterprise customers with solutions that provide a fast return on customers' investments." Also in Q4 2002, BlueArc began shipment of its next-generation Si8000 SiliconServer NAS systems, offering a full range of highly scalable, high-performance storage solutions architected to meet the extreme demands of any customer's network environment, from easy-to-deploy departmental solutions to high-end enterprise applications. Additional 2002 Highlights Alongside the company's rapid customer deployment, product development and sales growth, BlueArc achieved a number of additional business milestones in 2002, including the launch of the company's federal government and educational practices, continued expansion into new territories and vertical markets, and the expansion of the company's partner program, including relationships with CommVault Systems; Decru, Inc.; Extreme Networks, Inc.; Linux NetworX; and several others. BlueArc also introduced new service programs from its renowned Global Services Organization, including Network Assessment and Storage Assessment services, which provide on-site audits and analysis of customers' sites to ensure smooth functioning of their network and storage infrastructures. In October 2002, BlueArc was named #1 on the Top Ten Private Storage Networking Companies list by Byte and Switch, a leading online storage and networking industry news site with 140,000 unique visitors per month, for its new products and continued customer traction. BlueArc founder and chief technology officer Geoff Barrall was also recognized by Byte and Switch for his contribution to storage networking technology, as a "Top 10 Storage Networking Star."