GOVERNMENT

LOS ANGELES, CA -- DataDirect Networks, a leading provider of the world's highest performance storage networking appliances, announced the formation of its Board of Directors. The board is comprised of executives from ClearLight Partners, LLC that bring substantial financial and operating experience to DataDirect, and founding executives from DataDirect Networks that have grown the firm since its inception in 1988. The Board of Directors of DataDirect Networks is comprised of the following four members: -- Michael S. Kaye, Managing Partner, ClearLight Partners, LLC -- Robert Healy, Partner, ClearLight Partners, LLC -- Alex Bouzari, Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder, DataDirect Networks, Inc. -- Paul Bloch, Executive Vice President, Co-Founder, DataDirect Networks, Inc. ClearLight Partners, a $300 million private equity and venture capital fund, was lead investor in a funding round that netted DataDirect $9.9 million for sales and marketing expansion. Other investors in the round were European-based venture capital firm PART'COM and U.S.-based Digital Coast Ventures. "With the addition of Michael Kaye and Rob Healy, our board now has the strong operational experience to scale and grow DataDirect from the vertical markets we are successful in today into broader commercial markets," Alex Bouzari, chief executive officer, DataDirect Networks, said. "The Board's leadership will help the Company evolve the product and support mechanisms that has served DataDirect customers throughout our 13 years to serve the increasing requirements of businesses worldwide." DataDirect Networks creates highly scalable, simple-to-deploy and easy-to- manage storage networking appliance technology that accelerates application performance, simplifies information management, and establishes an intelligent platform for deploying application-specific storage software. The Company's Silicon Storage Appliances allow businesses to accelerate their applications, providing data three times faster than existing Storage Area Networking (SAN) 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 and dramatically lower their Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). The Silicon Storage Appliance technology allows management of up to 100 Terabytes by a single system administrator, reducing TCO by a factor of 10. DataDirect Networks' Silicon Storage Appliance product line is targeted at medium and large corporations for departmental, enterprise data center and carrier-class applications. DataDirect first released its data center platform in June 2000 and has subsequently sold systems to a wide range of clients including: Star TV, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, Loudeye, NASA, National Center for Atmospheric Research, National Century Financial Enterprises, NOAA Forecast Systems Lab, and Sonic Foundry. For additional information visit www.datadirectnet.com