Network Appliance Enhances Sales Relationship With Fujitsu Siemens Computers

Business Wire, March 14, 2002

Business Editors

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 14, 2002

Network Appliance Selected as Storage Partner for New

Blade Servers From Fujitsu Siemens Computers

Network Appliance (Nasdaq:NTAP), a leading provider of network storage solutions, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers announced today a significant enhancement to their European-wide sales relationship which began in July 2000. As Fujitsu Siemens Computers broadens its product portfolio into the blade server business, the company named Network Appliance as its strategic storage partner for this new server architecture. Blade servers represent a next step in the development of rack mount servers. They separate CPUs from I/O and do not use PCI slots, thus providing the highest server density at the lowest power consumption.

"Blade servers require storage architectures that provide data services over a LAN. Network-centric storage solutions are the ideal solution. We chose Network Appliance as a storage partner for blade server environments because they offer the most robust network storage solutions and meet the demanding enterprise need for server consolidation in the data center," says Dieter Herzog, vice president Primergy Servers, Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Together, we offer customers low TCO, ease of management, and high reliability."

"The evolution of storage toward network-centric architectures is a natural fit as rack mount servers evolve to blade configurations," said Ray Villenueve, vice president of marketing at Network Appliance. "Fujitsu Siemens Computers is paving the way for a new server paradigm. We're excited to continue to be part of the process that helps customers simplify their data centers and reap greater rewards from IT investments."

Blade servers complement Network Appliance enterprise storage solutions, which offer significant cost reductions as well as high investment returns. NetApp(R) filers are the ideal platform for storage consolidation and ensure high-performance, reliable data access in traditional server environments as well as for server blades. NetApp filers integrate seamlessly into existing Gigabit Ethernet environments and provide comprehensive management functionality including Snapshot(TM) technology and Clustered Failover providing enterprise-class availability.

About Network Appliance

Network Appliance, Inc., a leader in enterprise network storage, has been providing data access solutions since 1992 and is a member of both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ 100 index. Major corporations and service providers, including Citicorp Securities, Lockheed, Merrill Lynch, Oracle, Texas Instruments, and Yahoo!, utilize NetApp global data management solutions.

The company pioneered the concept of the "network appliance," an extension of the industry trend toward dedicated, specialized products that perform a single function. NetApp storage and content delivery platforms (filers and NetCache(R) appliances) are coupled with powerful content distribution and reporting software, offering seamless data management from the back-end data center to the remote edges of the network quickly, simply, and reliably. The Network Appliance(TM) product portfolio utilizes the company's innovative data access software, known as the Data ONTAP(TM) operating system, as well as standards-compliant hardware. It also offers multiprotocol support and transparent integration for UNIX(R) and Windows(R) environments.

NetApp and NetCache are registered trademarks and Network Appliance, Snapshot, and Data ONTAP are trademarks of Network Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.