XIOtech Forms Alliance With Science Applications International Corporation to Offer Professional Services

Business Wire, Sept 12, 2001

Business Editors & Technology Writers

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 12, 2001

Storage Provider and Global Integrator Team Up

to Simplify Enterprise Storage

Planning and Implementation

XIOtech Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seagate Technology and a storage area network (SAN) pioneer, today announced a strategic alliance with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) to provide customers with a broad range of professional services. These services will help companies plan their storage strategy, prepare a strong business case for storage, and implement SAN strategies for data migration, high availability and data survivability.

The professional services offerings begin with a SAN Assessment, which provides a comprehensive SAN framework for customers. The SAN Assessment establishes a strategic roadmap that identifies the components and costs associated with implementing a SAN, enabling companies to build a high-level business case for their SAN solution. Other services to be launched in the following months include: SAN design, data migration, disaster recovery, and backup and restore solutions.

"This alliance enables XIOtech to pursue large-scale opportunities that require the support of a global systems integrator," said Richard Blaschke, executive vice president of marketing at XIOtech. "SAIC's well-deserved reputation as a top IT company is the perfect complement to XIOtech's dedication to quality and customer service. Together we can provide the services that businesses need at the highest level possible."

SAIC is consistently named as a top information technology (IT) services provider, including rankings as the nation's third largest private IT company (Business Week 2001) and the fourth largest systems integrator in the U.S. (IDC 2001). SAIC provides technology solutions and services to government and commercial customers around the globe. With more than 41,000 employees in 150 locations worldwide, SAIC currently has annual revenues of more than $5.9 billion. The SAIC Applied Technology Group (ATG), located in Huntsville, Ala., leads the XIOtech strategic alliance.

"SAIC applies innovative technology to meet the specific business needs of our customers," said Bill Gurley, senior vice president and group manager of SAIC. "We look forward to helping customers address their complex storage issues through the application of XIOtech's advanced storage virtualization technology."

SAIC has formed a team consisting of senior IT project managers, SAN consultants, and senior systems engineers to design and implement XIOtech-based storage solutions. This team is trained and certified in XIOtech technologies and will deploy them in support of the alliance. In addition to creating the team, XIOtech and SAIC have established a demonstration and training lab in Huntsville to support development of additional Professional Service solutions.

"When customers deploy their initial SAN implementations or expand existing SANs to heterogeneous, enterprise storage environments, expert SAN design, implementation, and maintenance are important," said Jack Cuthbert, Brocade vice president of Sales, Marketing, and Support Services. "We are pleased to work with companies such as XIOtech to speed SAN deployment, helping our mutual customers quickly take advantage of the significant business benefits and high return on technology investment that storage networks make possible."

About XIOtech

XIOtech Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Seagate, develops comprehensive network storage solutions for business customers. The XIOtech MAGNITUDE(TM) hardware platform is based on the company's exclusive REal-Time Data Intelligence (REDI) software family--the first in the industry to incorporate true storage virtualization. The MAGNITUDE hardware platform, along with our comprehensive suite of application-specific software, makes storing, managing, safeguarding, and retrieving data on heterogeneous computing platforms easy and cost effective. For more information, visit XIOtech's Web site at www.xiotech.com, call (952) 983-3000 or email info@xiotech.com.

About Seagate

Seagate is the world's leading provider of storage technology for Internet, business and consumer applications. The Company's products include disc drives for the Enterprise, PCs and Consumer Electronics, as well as storage area network (SAN) solutions. Seagate's market leadership is based on delivering award-winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at www.seagate.com.

XIOtech is a registered trademark and MAGNITUDE and REDI are trademarks of XIOtech Corporation. Seagate and Seagate Technology are registered trademarks of Seagate Technology LLC. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.