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Intransa Ships First Full-Featured, Enterprise-Class IP-based Storage Area Network; Signs Up First Customer

Posted on: Monday, 30 June 2003, 06:00 CDT

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 30, 2003--

IP5000 Storage System Relieves Management and Cost Concerns for

Customers Consolidating High Volume Server and Storage Applications;

BlueStar Solutions Recognizes Benefits as New IP5000 Customer

Committed to simplifying networked storage for enterprise-class applications, Intransa today announced the general availability and first customer shipments of its IP5000 Storage System. Priced under two cents per megabyte (MB), the IP5000 is the industry's only full-featured IP-Storage Area Network (SAN). By taking advantage of industry standards such as iSCSI, IP and Ethernet, the IP5000 brings the benefits of SANs to all levels of the enterprise -- even those that previously may have found SANs to be too expensive or complicated to install.

"IT administrators have a difficult time justifying expensive networked storage solutions for their server and storage applications across a network," said Steve Duplessie, founder and principal analyst of Enterprise Storage Group. "As a pioneer in the IP-SAN market, Intransa is now shipping its IP5000, which has demonstrated real, bottom-line value to a broad range of applications that IT administrators cannot ignore."

Intransa also today announced BlueStar Solutions as a customer of the IP5000. BlueStar Solutions, a leading provider of IT outsourcing services for mid-market companies, delivers complete end-to-end services for managing packaged ERP applications as well as other data center services.

"Intransa's IP5000 has an architecture that makes sense," said Bill Augustadt, vice president and chief technical officer at BlueStar Solutions. "It lives on the network as a storage resource that is widely accessible and designed for redundancy and availability. We didn't have to worry about adding administration costs or complexity into our environment."

The IP5000 introduces a sophisticated architecture and management software that enables customers to easily add storage capacity from 3 to 10 terabytes (TB) and consolidate high volume e-mail and collaborative environments such as Microsoft Exchange, databases, backup and restore applications and other mission-critical data management and disaster recovery applications.

"The IP5000 could enable our University hospital to mirror a terabyte worth of archived doctors' Dictaphone notes and easily manage the large amounts of archived files at a cost unmatched by other networked storage solutions," said Dan Hague, senior engineer, IT Communications, The University of Michigan. "With our partial mesh multiple-gigabit backbone, the IP5000 provides us with the flexibility we need on a network built to handle the data transfer. We could install IP5000s in a central computer room, or in several computer rooms connected to distributed servers all over campus."

"With our iSCSI software initiator package, Microsoft is playing a key role in bringing together the storage vendors to make iSCSI-based applications and storage devices a reality for customers," said Zane Adam, director of product management and marketing in the Enterprise Storage Division at Microsoft Corp. "Mutual customers using the Microsoft iSCSI software initiator and the Intransa IP5000 can expect improved cost efficiencies and manageability from their storage solutions."

Redefining SAN Design

The IP5000 is based on the patented IntraStor(TM) architecture, which provides a smarter approach to implementing network storage through intelligent, self-healing and self-managing features that free up critical IT resources. The IP5000 installs easily and scales simply by attaching additional storage or controller modules to the Ethernet network.

Intransa's IntraStor architecture places the storage management function in the network itself and allows the management and control functions to be physically separate from the actual storage devices. Storage can be managed as a single pool from anywhere in the network and key storage management functions such as the virtual volume manager, mirroring and snapshots are implemented within the network. Additionally, discovery, fault management and failover are managed automatically by the IP5000.

"Since the introduction of the IP5000 in April, Intransa has worked closely with customers and leading storage partners such as Adaptec, Intel, QLogic and Microsoft to finalize a standards-based, fully interoperable IP-SAN that is customer-ready out of the box," said Dr. Avi Katz, president and CEO of Intransa. "We continue to receive excellent feedback from world renowned customers regarding the IP5000's ability to consolidate and easily manage their server and storage applications across multiple software environments. At a fraction of the cost of today's complex Fibre Channel SANs, customers are eager to integrate the IP5000 into their network."

Pricing and Availability

The IP5000 Storage System is now available with an MSRP of $62,500 for a 3.2 TB unit. The IP5000 will be available through a select group of resellers.

"As an innovative provider of complete IT solutions that help companies meet their business goals, Greenpages is pleased to offer the industry's only full-featured IP-SAN, the IP5000 to our customers," said Mario Brum, solutions architect -- storage at Greenpages. "Intransa's IP5000 Storage System enables our customers to experience the functionality and scalability of an enterprise-class IP-SAN at a dramatically reduced price-point. We are excited to partner with Intransa to deliver a complete storage solution."

About Intransa

Intransa, with headquarters in San Jose, California, develops intelligent storage solutions and technologies to radically reduce the complexity of workgroup, departmental and enterprise level networked storage solutions. Based on advanced technology that leverages the cost and performance advantage of Ethernet, Intransa's products will enable a new generation of high performance, network scalable storage services.

Founded in September 2000, Intransa has secured a total of $40 million in funding from 3Com, Advanced Technology Ventures, Sofinnova Ventures, Sofinnova Partners and US Venture Partners. For more information, visit www.intransa.com.

Intransa, IntraStor, and StorControl are registered trademarks of Intransa Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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