STORAGE

SAN JOSE, CA -- TrueSAN Networks, Inc. today unveiled Cloudbreak(TM), the industry's first Storage Operating System(TM): a comprehensive, network-based platform for managing heterogeneous storage networks. The culmination of nearly two years of extensive research and development and customer outreach, Cloudbreak enables enterprises to realize the promise of storage area networks (SANs) and maximize the ROI benefits of SAN technology. Cloudbreak addresses four important trends in the storage market today: (1) the convergence of storage management intelligence into the network, (2) customer demand for open storage infrastructures incorporating multiple vendors, (3) the need for a comprehensive platform for storage management, not a multitude of point utilities, and (4) the emergence of automated, policy-based storage administration. Gartner, Inc. estimates that the cost of managing storage infrastructure has grown to 4-7 times the cost of hardware. "Today's SANs leave several opportunities to further improve costs," said Gartner, Inc.'s Research Director Robert Passmore. "These opportunities include better support for heterogeneous hardware, tighter integration for centralized management and universal policy management." TrueSAN's Cloudbreak Storage Operating System is the first software solution to combine Storage Virtualization, Storage Network and Device Management, Storage Resource Management, and Business Continuance technology in a single, tightly integrated platform. As IT managers must now piece together single-purpose utilities from a variety of vendors, deployment challenges, interoperability issues, and complexity are not conducive to maximizing ROI. With Cloudbreak, enterprises can select a single solution for comprehensively addressing all of the factors behind excessive storage management cost: inefficient storage utilization, lack of compatibility across vendors, multiple points of management, inadequate data availability, and reactive storage administration. "We believe that the five critical foundation elements for building an enterprise storage management framework are SRM, Data Management, Virtualization (storage abstraction), Network/Device management, and Policy management," stated Steve Duplessie, Founder of The Enterprise Storage Group. "TrueSAN is hitting all of our major hot spots with a highly integrated offering." By moving the control and intelligence of the storage infrastructure into the network, Cloudbreak consolidates the management of large multi-vendor storage environments into a single centralized platform, not possible with traditional host-based or storage system-resident applications. By uniting critical storage management technologies into a single solution, linked by a robust policy manager, Cloudbreak provides an intelligent platform for increasing productivity through automated storage administration. Furthermore, the TrueSAN solution features a unique distributed architecture that maximizes the reliability and scalability of the storage network without requiring customers to acquire costly new hardware or re-evaluate their service levels. TrueSAN has reportedly attracted world-class companies, channel partners, and OEMs as beta sites for its Cloudbreak Storage Operating System. TrueSAN's beta sites include four Fortune 500 companies across a variety of vertical markets, including financial services, transportation, oil/gas, digital media, and the Internet. TrueSAN intends to begin its beta program in Q1 2002 with general availability due in mid-2002. TrueSAN will also be announcing alliances with industry-leading storage hardware vendors that further endorse the TrueSAN solution as an open platform for storage management and help maximize interoperability. "With today's announcement of Cloudbreak, TrueSAN has delivered a solution that solves the most significant problem in IT today: unrelenting storage management cost and complexity," stated Tom Isakovich, President and CEO of TrueSAN. "We look forward to working with our customers, partners, and the storage industry to help make the promise of open storage management a reality." For further information visit www.truesan.com