ULTERA SYSTEMS BOOSTS INTERNATIONAL SALES PRESENCE IN DEAL WITH MACNICA

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., August 23, 1999.....Ultera Systems, the leading tape array controller and tape array system supplier, today announced the appointment of Macnica Inc., as its master distributor for Japan, securing one of the country’s leading storage resellers to handle the full line of Ultera tape array controller products.

Macnica is one of Japan’s largest distributors, supplying a broad range of networking, components and storage products to a large network of resellers and integrators, OEMs and direct customers, including some of Japan’s largest electronics firms, such as Fujitsu, Sharp, Hitachi, Canon, OKI, NEC, NTT and SoftBank.

Macnica has established a reputation as a major resource of network and network storage expertise. The company is a significant supplier of storage technology to the Japanese market, including RAID disk products, Qualstar tape libraries and Storage Area Network hardware and software, enabling Macnica to sell Ultera’s high-performance, high-availability tape array technology to its existing customer base.

"Ultera’s tape RAID technology is a significant added value for Macnica to take to its customers who are already involved in RAID technology," said Fred Bedard, Vice President Sales and Marketing at Ultera. "Wherever there is a disk array, there is a need to backup and secure that data, and the fastest, most reliable way to perform that backup is with a tape array. Macnica has recognized this vast opportunity, and we look forward to working with their team to develop tape RAID as a standard technology in Japan."

"Macnica’s corporate motto is to provide its customers with the best products and services by making quick decisions and taking quick action. That’s why we are moving quickly to add Ultera to our product offerings," said Shoichi Teshiba, Marketing Manager for Storage Products at Macnica. "Ultera’s tape array technology integrates easily with current tape library and backup software products, which allows us to offer our customers backup solutions with unmatched reliability and performance that is fully compatible with their current hardware and software investments."

In addition to its storage and networking expertise, Macnica is renowned for its vast customer support capabilities. The company offers a full range of services to support solutions, including zero down time hardware replacement, software maintenance services with electronic software updates and 24/7 on-site maintenance and support from 124 service sites throughout Japan.

Ultera Systems provides unprecedented tape performance with its innovative line of tape array controllers. Ultera controllers can be configured for RAID-1 operation, mirroring data to a pair of drives, or RAID-3 with data and parity information striped across a set of two or four drives. This configuration offers fault-tolerance, allowing tape backup operations to continue even in the event of a drive or media failure, as well as the fastest available performance by utilizing the cumulative bandwidth of all attached tape drives. An optional parity drive can be added to maximize reliability of the tape array.

The Ultera product line includes the following models:

Striper™ Series: high-end tape array controller that stripes data across up to five independent parallel array channels allowing for fast – up to 40 MB/sec. – flexible and highly reliable data protection.

LibraryMaster™ Series: extends the tape array paradigm to the library level, creating an array of multi-drive libraries utilizing Ultera’s third-generation Tape RAID technology to provide the highest tape performance, backup/restore automation and fault-tolerant data protection while complementing existing tape technologies.

Imager™ Series: allows simultaneous creation of two or more identical backup tapes in real time with no additional system overhead or software changes necessary.

ShadowMaster™ Series: provides real-time data mirroring across multiple tape loaders and libraries for the ultimate in data reliability and disaster recovery.

About Ultera Systems
Ultera Systems, Inc. is the leading manufacturer of RAID Tape Array controllers and subsystems designed for high-speed backup, archive and high-speed data acquisition applications. All industry standard tape drives, tape libraries and storage management software are compatible with the Ultera Arrays. Its tape array product lines are marketed under the trade names "Striper," "Imager," "LibraryMaster" and "ShadowMaster," and sold through OEMs, VARs and Systems Integrators worldwide. Ultera is based in Laguna Hills, Calif.

For further information, call (949) 367-8800, email inform@ultera.com or visit Ultera's web site at http://www.ultera.com.