Legato Systems and Octopus Technologies Announce Strategic Marketing Alliance to Deliver Combined Storage Management Functions and Server Mirroring; Provide High Availability and Data Protection in a Microsoft Windows NT Operating System Environment

Business Wire, April 2, 1996

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 2, 1996--Legato Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:LGTO), a leader in the enterprise storage management software market, and Octopus Technologies Inc., a leader in the software market for the Microsoft Windows NT operating system, today announced they will combine Legato's storage management application software with Octopus' server mirroring to provide for business continuance in a Windows NT-based systems environment.

Legato and Octopus Windows NT-based products are packaged together to provide high availability and data protection, as well as ease of ordering at a reduced price.

Bob Chronister of Chronister Consultants said: "With the movement to centralized management of Windows NT-based products, fault tolerance becomes a critical factor in the planning of the network. Concern is being raised about protection and replication of files, data and the OS. The traditional manner of satisfying this concern has been through the use of automated tape backups.

"NetWorker is one of the premier applications that can handle enterprise wide backup and restore with its centralized storage and use of client distributed push technology. Octopus is a full fledged replicating service that recently has offered Automatic Switch Over (ASO) of systems. In other words, failure on one system results in functional takeover by a different system. This obviously provides users with automatic recovery from a system disaster.

"The two applications together provide much of the needed software maintenance for fault tolerance. Their combined marketing shows an understanding of the synergistic workings of both NetWorker and Octopus. This, indeed, is an important step forward for the community using Windows NT in the centralized Enterprise Management of Windows-NT based networks," concluded Chronister.

"Microsoft is pleased that the ISV community is working together to provide solutions for our customers using the Windows NT Server," said Mike Nash, group product manager in the business systems division at Microsoft Corp.

"Octopus and Legato are among the leaders in their respective markets, and with these new products provide customers the high availability and protection they require for Windows NT Server-based environments."

Super Bundle One: Octopus Server and Legato Data Backup Utility

Lou Cole, president and CEO of Legato Systems, said: "Corp.s of all sizes benefit from the combination of enterprise storage management and server mirroring providing their employees continuous access to mission critical data. With NetWorker's ability to centrally manage all storage systems, and Octopus' Automated Switch Over capability, administration is greatly simplified."

Super Bundle One will consist of the Octopus Server product together with the Legato Data Backup Utility (LDBU) for Windows NT. This will provide a "single server" functionality enabling a Windows NT-based server to mirror and backup itself to a single high-speed tape drive. The price for Bundle One is $995 U.S. list.

Octopus Server provides data fault tolerance and real time data protection for Windows NT-based networks. Updates to source files are mirrored to disks across LANs and WANs at user-specified targets. An up-to-date copy of mirrored files is available on the network in the event of data loss or hardware failure at the source location. Octopus Server can mirror data: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many with no additional hardware requirements.

Octopus supports Intel, Alpha, MIPS, and PowerPC platforms. Octopus also provides Data Fault Tolerance for the Microsoft BackOffice suite of products, and is certified as Microsoft BackOffice-compatible.

Legato Data Backup Utility (LDBU) is a new data backup utility for entry-level users of Windows NT-based storage management software. LDBU for Windows NT offers first-time customers backup function and performance previously available only at a retail price of several hundred dollars in the marketplace.

Customers whose requirements are limited to backing up a single Windows NT-based server to a single tape drive will find the LDBU for Windows NT a very effective solution and an easy way to begin using high-function backup software. The LDBU also ensures an easy migration path to Legato's NetWorker for Windows NT products as a customer's requirements grow.

Super Bundle Two: Octopus ASO (Automatic Switch Over) and NetWorker for Windows NT Server Edition

Dave Crocker, president and CEO of Octopus Technologies, said: "Super Bundle Two provides users fault tolerance for all of their Windows NT-based data by eliminating any single source of failure in their network configurations. In addition, users can maintain the implementation of prudent backup strategies in parallel with 24 x 7 server and data availability."

Super Bundle Two will consist of two Octopus Servers plus the ASO product, together with the NetWorker for Windows NT Server Edition. This combination will provide a "target server" functionality for server mirroring and the ability to provide high-speed backup of the target server using Legato NetWorker for Windows NT to high-speed tape drives and autoloaders with full parallelism. The price for Bundle Two is $3,000 U.S. list.