Network Appliance Positioned in Leaders Quadrant in Midrange Enterprise Disk Array Magic Quadrant

Business Wire, Nov 9, 2005

SUNNYVALE, Calif. -- Network Appliance, Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP), the leader in advanced networked storage solutions, was listed in the "leader" quadrant for midrange enterprise disk arrays in Gartner's research note "Magic Quadrant for Midrange Enterprise Disk Array, 2H05."(1) Gartner, defines "leaders" as companies that have the market share, credibility, and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies. They demonstrate understanding of market needs, are innovators and thought leaders, and have well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can use in designing their storage infrastructure and strategies.

"We are honored to be listed in the leader quadrant in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for midrange enterprise disk arrays. We believe this reinforces our capabilities and strengths in the mid-range and our continued recognition in enterprise environments by our customers," said Patrick Rogers, vice president of marketing, Products and Partners at Network Appliance. "Storage demands are increasing at a rapid rate across all industries and that data growth represents a huge management challenge. As a result, customers expect their storage suppliers to offer them novel ways to control costs, reduce IT burdens, and deliver incremental value. Our FAS systems reduce overall complexity, increase performance, and simplify data management."

Network Appliance(TM) SAN solutions provide an unmatched combination of high-performance, robustness, and ease-of-use for Windows(R), Solaris(R), HP/UX, IBM AIX, and Linux(R) computing platforms. As part of the unified NetApp(R) architecture, the FAS3000 systems support file services, FC SAN, IP SAN, and multiple network configurations, while offering scalability to higher performance systems with seamless, painless upgrades without requiring the "forklift" data migration needed by most other offerings currently on the market. Designed with enterprise serviceability, continuous availability, and easy manageability in mind, the NetApp FAS systems increase reliability, simplify maintenance, and reduce storage infrastructure complexity.

Additionally, FAS systems offer the FlexVol(TM) capabilities built into Data ONTAP(R) 7G, which improves disk performance even for small data volumes. FlexVol technology can also increase customers' storage utilization by up to 50%.

The Gartner research note is available from Gartner at www.gartner.com. The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted November 2005 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product, or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Network Appliance

Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992, Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner firsts that simplify data management. Information about Network Appliance(TM) solutions and services is available at www.netapp.com.

(1) Magic Quadrant for Midrange Enterprise Disk Arrays, 2H04, by Stanley Zaffos, April Adams and Roger W. Cox, November 2005.

NetApp and Data ONTAP are registered trademarks and Network Appliance and FlexVol are trademarks of Network Appliance, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.