EqualLogic Expands Presence as Leading Storage Provider in Manufacturing Sector; Manufacturing Companies Partner with Innovative SAN Solution Provider to Improve Operations with Efficient Storage Consolidation and Data Protection

Business Wire, March 27, 2006

NASHUA, N.H. -- EqualLogic(R), the leading provider of complete, enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced its increased traction in the manufacturing industry, further demonstrating the company's momentum in the burgeoning networked storage market. Manufacturers are relying on EqualLogic to simplify their IT management operations, establish best-practice data protection processes and scale storage capacity on demand. EqualLogic highlights new manufacturing customers including: electrical motor manufacturer A.O. Smith Electrical Products Company, automotive brake manufacturer, Ambrake Corporation, engineered steel producer Shiloh Industries, plastic resin supplier AT Plastics, heating and cooling distributor Behler-Young Co., illuminated sign manufacturer Everbrite, and chemical supplier Benchmark Energy Products.

"As our business started to boom and expand across numerous states, we were spending a great deal of money on IT," said Steve Collins, IT administrator at Benchmark Energy Products. "Ultimately, we needed a reliable data recovery solution that would provide the protection we needed in the event of a disaster for a price point we could afford. When Hurricane Rita was headed for Houston and our main office, we were able to do last minute snapshots and replication to a safe location with the sophisticated data management features provided with the EqualLogic SAN. EqualLogic was priceless in this situation."

"As an automotive supplier who provides brakes to automotive manufacturers such as Honda, Toyota and GM, we needed a storage solution that was both reliable and efficient," said Sandra Gospodarec, senior network administrator at Ambrake Manufacturing, Ltd. "The real advantage we saw in EqualLogic over others was that the system could retrieve backed up data in less than five minutes and controlled all of our storage from one interface. The EqualLogic storage solution has tremendously freed up our time."

"When we evaluated storage solutions, our biggest concern was cost," said David Eley, LAN administrator at A.O. Smith Electrical Products Company. "Although we considered alternatives such as Fibre Channel, we selected iSCSI because it proved to be the most cost effective. EqualLogic offered an extremely reasonable solution that performed at the demanding level our organization needed, proving to be a reliable solution that delivers outstanding customer support."

Beyond the immediate efficiencies of storage consolidation, EqualLogic's customers are improving data protection with disk-to-disk backups, instantly recoverable snapshots, and remote replication for ultimate data security in the event of a disaster. Advanced data protection features are available the minute a PS Series SAN is deployed, and additional storage capacity can be added on the fly with no downtime. The PS Series' self-managing intelligence frees IT professionals to concentrate on strategic initiatives, instead of spending hours on routine storage management tasks or recovering data from tape.

EqualLogic's PS Series SAN delivers a cost-effective and easy-to-manage storage consolidation and protection solution to a long list of manufacturing industry customers worldwide. As predominantly process-oriented businesses, manufacturers across the board need more efficient access to data and better backup and restore procedures for business-critical data. EqualLogic's manufacturing customers store data for essential applications, including companywide email and large databases; financial, ERP, and CRM systems; computer aided design and engineering applications; manufacturing automation software; as well as centralized file storage and retrieval.

"As manufacturing companies expand their business to profitably address growing markets, it is imperative they have the capacity to save, use, and protect their ever-increasing data stores," said John Joseph, vice president of marketing at EqualLogic. "EqualLogic's solution helps manufacturers consolidate storage and easily access their data, enabling them to meet the just-in-time needs of the demand economy and better serve their markets. Our technology allows IT staff to allocate more resources to other projects while maintaining the cost efficiencies most manufacturing organizations require."

EqualLogic's PS Series of storage arrays deliver a complete solution to manufacturing companies of all sizes, offering a reliable, self-managing, scalable pool of storage that responds nimbly to user demands. EqualLogic's award-winning and data-center-proven PS Series is the only native iSCSI SAN solution to offer a comprehensive and fully integrated standard feature set at no additional cost. Each PS Series storage array comes with fully redundant, fault-tolerant hardware and includes automatic storage-management software in a self-contained chassis. Multiple arrays can be combined to form a scalable enterprise storage grid of more than 100 terabytes.

About EqualLogic

EqualLogic(R), Inc., is the leading provider of intelligent, enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses - from Fortune 100 to small and mid-size organizations - to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage. The EqualLogic PS Series of storage arrays, based on the company's patented peer storage architecture, is the industry's first automatic storage platform that delivers operational simplicity, comprehensive data management services and high data availability in a single, scalable pool of storage. EqualLogic's headquarters are located in Nashua, New Hampshire. For more information, please visit http://www.equallogic.com.