Strangeloop Networks' WS1000 Web Services Accelerator Named "Best of Tech-Ed 2008 IT Professional Awards Finalist" by Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazines

Strangeloop Networks, a leading provider of solutions that accelerate dynamic web applications developed with Microsoft's ASP.NET framework or which rely on web services, today announced that its Strangeloop WS1000 Web Services Accelerator was named as a finalist of the "Best of Tech-Ed 2008 IT Professional Awards" in the Hardware, Networking and Storage category by Penton Media's Windows IT Pro® and SQL Server Magazine®.

The Best of Tech-Ed 2008 Awards recognize companies who offer innovative products in the industry. The judges reviewed over 220 products and services submitted for the contest and chose 29 finalists to be interviewed at the Tech-Ed 2008 IT Professionals Conference in Orlando, Fla. Winners will be announced on June 12 at an evening reception for all of the finalists and at www.WindowsITPro.com/awards on June 13.

"Choosing from such a wide variety of outstanding entries is a challenge every year, and the quality of this year's entries was particularly high," said Karen Forster, group editorial and strategy director for Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine. "The products selected as finalists clearly provide innovative solutions and strategic importance to the market, are competitively advantageous, and provide exceptional value to customers."

"We are thrilled to be recognized as an innovative leader in application acceleration by Windows IT Pro and SQL Server Magazine," said Jonathan Bixby, president and CEO of Strangeloop Networks. "Organizations have huge investments in mainframe and centralized applications and these systems are buckling under the load and performance demands of today's web services. The Strangeloop WS1000 Web Services Accelerator provides an easy-to-deploy performance solution that immediately reduces workloads, driving up performance and driving down costs."

Strangeloop's newest solution, the WS1000 Web Services Accelerator announced on April 16, is designed specifically to accelerate web services. The Strangeloop WS1000 provides intelligent caching for high volume web services, reducing application workloads, keeping critical business applications running smoothly and efficiently, while at the same significantly reducing computing costs. The appliance's Choreography Engine(TM) has heuristic caching capabilities that recognize web services and adapt to changing traffic patterns, automatically reducing the database calls and accelerating the delivery of the web services. This lighter workload also significantly reduces mainframe or central server costs. The Strangeloop WS1000 provides a simple, easy-to-use interface that automatically discovers web services and guides the administrator through cache control configuration for any number of web services - without the need to learn any coding language or a complex management tool. In addition, IT staff can quickly review how individual web services are being handled and can measure server offload, latency and bandwidth reductions gained through the functionality provided by the Strangeloop WS1000.

The Strangeloop Networks products accelerate dynamic web applications with unique, framework-specific solutions that require minimal changes to software coding and hardware infrastructure, freeing developers to focus on providing enterprises with value-added features. With the Strangeloop AS1000 Application Scaling Appliance for Microsoft ASP.NET and AJAX and the Strangeloop WS1000 Web Services Accelerator, enterprises dramatically shorten code cycles, improve application performance and throughput, more efficiently use bandwidth, achieve greater return on their investment in information technology (IT) staff, network and computing resources and boost customer satisfaction. Strangeloop is based in Vancouver, B.C. For more information, visit www.strangeloopnetworks.com .

Penton Media's Windows IT Pro, the largest independent Windows IT community in the world, has Windows IT Pro as its flagship print publication. Windows IT Pro also includes SQL Server Magazine and Office SharePoint Pro. The Windows IT Pro network has 2.5 million unique visitors to its Web sites each month, and more than one million subscribers who opt-in to one or more email newsletters. Windows IT Pro is the world's leading producer of custom road shows, paid conferences and paid workshops for Windows and SQL Server IT and developer professionals. For more information visit: www.windowsitpro.com .

Penton Media, Inc. is the largest independent business-to-business media company in the U.S., serving more than six million business professionals every month. The company's market-leading brands are focused on 30 industries and include 113 trade magazines, 145 Web sites, 150 industry trade shows and conferences, and more than 500 information data products. Headquartered in New York City, the privately held company is owned by MidOcean Partners and U.S. Equity Partners II, an investment fund sponsored by Wasserstein & Co., LP, and its co-investors. For additional information on the company and its businesses, visit www.penton.com .