ESG Hits 100th Lab Validation Report Milestone

Business Wire, Oct 27, 2008

Recognized as the gold standard in building product credibility

MILFORD, Mass & FRANKFURT, Germany -- Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) announced today that it has achieved a major milestone with the publication of ESG Lab's 100th Lab Validation Report. The ESG Testing and Analysis Service provides objective, third-party verification of a product's capabilities and provides insight into why--and how--these capabilities will matter to customers. The 100th Validation Report was completed for IBRIX, Inc., and examines the IBRIX Fusion scalable network-attached file system software.

Market Validation is one of the four cornerstones of ESG's strategic offerings. The unmatched experience of the ESG Lab team leverages dozens of years of performance analysis, systems design--including over 9 patent awards--and thousands of tests on many thousands of configurations. This experience has led to the development of ESG "workload" generating technologies that accurately simulate real-world application environments, allowing users to quickly gain an accurate view of how a product will perform within their specific environments.

"We were looking for a way to independently assess and effectively measure attributes such as the performance, scalability, reliability and usability of our products," said Milan Shetti, CEO of IBRIX, Inc. "The ESG Lab team is uniquely qualified to perform the type of real-world testing users and vendors demand."

ESG Lab Validation Reports demonstrate the technical and business advantages and benefits of products in a clear, concise format that helps educate customers on the performance attributes, features and functions of technology products and their value to IT organizations.

"ESG Lab tests NetApp products in real-world customer environments and explains the results in a way that makes sense for our business," said Joel Reich, VP and GM, SAN/iSAN Business Unit, NetApp (NASDAQ:NTAP). "Thousands of copies of ESG Lab reports demonstrating NetApp's iSCSI and SAN offerings have been downloaded from the company's NOW support site and NetApp.com. The reports enable our customers and prospects to see the simplicity and value of NetApp's growing family of SAN and iSCSI solutions."

ESG Lab Validation Reports are also valuable to IT professionals in the process of defining purchasing requirements, issuing RFIs/RFPs, budgeting and qualifying "short list" vendors and are routinely used as "proof-points" to support buying decisions. With over one hundred ESG Lab Validations completed, and tens of thousands of downloads, these reports have become the de facto standard product validation tool used by IT decision makers.

"ESG Lab validations are the absolute gold standard for technical product reports," said Steve Zivanic, Vice President, Corporate Communications, DataDirect Networks. "Customers love them, sales representatives love them, and partners love them. There is no better way to get to the truth about a product's real world performance than a comprehensive ESG Lab report."

"ESG Lab tests products as a customer would--to show how real configurations will perform in real environments," said Brian Garrett, Technical Director, ESG Lab. "ESG Lab uses product tests, usability evaluations, performance benchmarks, customer interviews and expert analysis to create an objective view so that end-users can make the right IT buying decisions."

All reports are available free of charge at www.enterprisestrategygroup.com.

About ESG

The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) is widely recognized as the leading authority on Data Center issues, technologies and trends. As an integrated, full-service firm, ESG is world-renowned for research, guidance and analysis that provide forward-looking, actionable market intelligence and consulting services geared to deliver measurable results. ESG was named one of the world's top 10 analyst firms of the year in 2008 by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations. ESG's integrated intelligence is relied upon worldwide by IT professionals, technology vendors, institutional investors and the channel and media communities.

For more information visit: www.enterprisestrategygroup.com.