Akara's Product is IBM TotalStorage Proven for Storage Extension across MAN/WAN

Business Wire, Oct 3, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

OTTAWA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 3, 2002

Akara's Storage over SONET solution interoperable with IBM's Shark

and extends business continuance applications over greater distances

Akara, a leading developer of Storage over SONET extension solutions, announced today that its OUSP has successfully completed interoperability testing with IBM's TotalStorage Enterprise Storage products and has earned the IBM TotalStorage(TM) Proven designation. As a result, enterprise customers can extend their SANs over greater distances with the lowest MByte per mile cost by deploying a solution that combines Akara's and IBM's state-of-the-art storage extension technology, with the assurance of interoperability.

"With the increased visibility of Akara's solutions to the IBM Business Partner and sales representative community, Akara gains greater visibility to our customers and can anticipate smooth, reliable implementations. This leads to reduced sales cycles and ultimately increases customer satisfaction," said Kathleen Smith, Vice President, Storage Solutions for IBM's Storage Systems Group.

"We recognize that interoperability and cost are two of the most pressing issues for our customers," said Ed Ogonek, CEO of Akara. "Akara is helping companies achieve faster deployments by gaining interoperability with leading storage vendors, and helping them reduce costs with our Storage over SONET technology. Akara's certification with IBM is further validation of our Storage over SONET approach to extending SANs securely over greater distances while producing significant cost savings."

Akara is the only provider of storage over a SONET platform that enables enterprises to leverage existing carrier networks for reliable, lowest cost/MByte storage extension. Akara's OUSP multiplexes data center protocols such as FC, FICON, ESCON and GbE directly into flexible SONET payloads to extend enterprises' business continuance applications over existing SONET/SDH, dark fiber or DWDM networks. This customer-premise device is "enterprise-ready" with OC-3, OC-12 and OC-48 connectivity, enabling the majority of enterprises to easily connect their storage networks to carriers' ubiquitous SONET services for high-performance, cost-effective extended storage networking. With Akara's OUSP, enterprises can create multiple FC, ESCON, GbE and FICON links over a single metro-DWDM wavelength or carrier-leased SONET circuit.

The IBM TotalStorage Proven program supports the ability of Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to build high-quality solutions with the latest technology on leading storage platforms as well as reduce solution design time when multiple, tested building blocks have already been pre-tested. The program certification process ensures that applications and hardware from leading companies such as Akara, combined with IBM state-of-the-art technology, provide customers with flexible, ready to run, easily installed solutions that address their software and infrastructure needs.

About Akara

Akara, the Storage over SONET market leader, is the only equipment supplier with a singular focus on extending business continuance applications between data centers with the lowest MByte per mile cost across existing MAN/WAN networks. Akara's solutions significantly reduces operational and capital expense by leveraging the existing SONET/SDH, dark fiber or DWDM networks, and ensures the performance of Fibre Channel, ESCON, FICON and Gigabit Ethernet in geographically dispersed business continuance applications. Akara has offices in Ottawa, Ontario and Waltham, Massachusetts. Visit Akara online at www.akara.com.