ADIC Market Share Leader for Third Consecutive Year According to Analyst Firm Report; Small Form Factor Drive Segment Increases Overall Dominance in 2003 to 66% of Total Automation Market

Business Wire, May 4, 2004

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

REDMOND, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 4, 2004

Advanced Digital Information Corporation (Nasdaq:ADIC), leader in Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions for the open systems market, announced today that industry analyst firm Gartner Dataquest has named the company as market share leader in the largest tape automation segment for the third consecutive year in a newly-released study of market trends. The study also reports that the market segment that includes systems using either LTO or DLT/SDLT tape technologies dramatically increased its dominant position in the overall tape automation market, growing from 58.1% in 2002 to 66.1% last year. This segment now accounts for $1.2 billion in revenue worldwide, up by approximately 2% over the 2002 total.

Compared to 2002 figures, ADIC increased its own market-leading share by almost six percentage points to 30.4% of the worldwide revenues for the small-form-factor half-inch drive automation segment, according to Gartner Dataquest's Market Shares: Tape Automation Systems Worldwide, 2003. According to the report, ADIC also leads the market in unit volumes with a 31.4% share in the small-form-factor segment and a 22.9% share in the overall tape library market.

"There are two key stories in this report," said Peter van Oppen, ADIC Chairman and CEO. "The first is that the drives used primarily for backing up open systems networks -- including LTO and SDLT -- have truly become the dominant force in the overall tape automation market, increasing their share from around 54% in 2001 to more than 66% last year. The second is that ADIC not only has continued its market-leading position, but that we increased our share by nearly six percentage points in a single year from an already high base.

"We believe this significant gain is a validation of our long-term commitment to building a higher level of whole-system intelligence into our solutions. Looking forward, we believe that this leadership provides us with the perfect position to offer the IT community new generations of innovative data protection solutions that use different kinds of storage media. A perfect example of this is our Pathlight VX disk-to-tape solutions set. It emulates our intelligent libraries on disk and integrates tightly with them to offer customers a highly scalable, easily managed backup resource that combines the best characteristics of disk and tape."

Gartner Dataquest tracks, analyzes and forecasts market developments in various areas of technology, and evaluates vendor activities and end-user trends.

About ADIC

Advanced Digital Information Corporation (Nasdaq:ADIC) is a leading provider of Intelligent Storage(TM) solutions to the open systems marketplace. ADIC is the world's largest supplier of automated tape systems using the drive technologies most often employed for backing up open system, client-server networks.* The Company's data management software, storage networking appliances, and disk-to-tape data protection solutions provide IT managers innovative tools for storing, managing and protecting their most valuable digital assets in a variety of disk and tape environments. ADIC storage products are available through a worldwide sales force and a global network of resellers and OEMs, including Cray, Dell, Fujitsu-Siemens, HP, IBM and Sun. Further information about ADIC is available at www.adic.com.

*IDC 2001 worldwide revenue and unit market share data for all automated systems using DLT, SDLT, LTO, 8mm or AIT drives, and Gartner Dataquest, Tape Automation Systems Market Shares, 2003, F. Yale, April 2004. ADIC and Scalar are registered trademarks and Intelligent Storage is a trademark of Advanced Digital Information Corporation. All other trade or service marks mentioned in this document should be considered the property of their respective owners.