San Jose, Calif. — May 4, 2005 — Alacritech® Inc., the innovator of Dynamic TCP Offload™ data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems, today announced that Alacritech’s top-performing SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator has won the 2005 Well-Connected Award from CMP Media LLC’s Network Computing magazine. Alacritech received the prestigious award in the core area of Data Management and Storage for its superior processing capabilities, critical load balancing and failover features combined with the lowest price point. The award follows rigorous comparison testing of competitive iSCSI controller offerings in August 2004 by Network Computing’s Real-World Labs® reviewers who selected the Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator as the Editor’s Choice.

“We selected the Alacritech SES1001T iSCSI Accelerator for the Editor’s Choice and subsequently nominated it for the Well-Connected Award because of its impressive data-center-level features, including link aggregation and failover,” said Steven Hill, contributing editor, Network Computing magazine. “The Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator has impressive features and performance, and with a price under $500, it’s tailored for the needs of the iSCSI market—we’re pleased to see it win the Well-Connected Award.”

“Alacritech’s iSCSI Accelerators have repeatedly been proven to outperform the competition, and are the only iSCSI controllers to provide the critical failover capabilities required for scalability in storage networks,” said Joe Gervais, director, Marketing, Alacritech Inc. “We’re honored to be selected as a Winner of the 2005 Network Computing Well-Connected Award. This award further validates Alacritech’s dedication to providing the performance, reliability and the scalability IP SAN customers require.”

In August 2004, CMP Media LLC’s Network Computing magazine’s Real-World Labs evaluated competitive iSCSI cards including the Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator, Adaptec® 7211C iSCSI Card and QLogic™ QLA4010 SANblade™ on key performance and usability criteria. Alacritech’s SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator received the Editor’s Choice Award as it outperformed the competitive offerings by delivering the strongest bi-directional and IOps performance, critical transparency, management and failover capabilities—all for the lowest price. Alacritech’s iSCSI Accelerator was also the winner of Network Computing’s Custom Test which consisted of a challenging matrix of concurrent reads, writes and file sizes designed to hammer the system with intense but realistic access patterns. The full comparison review entitled “Put to the Test: Host Bus Adapters Make iSCSI Fly” is available at:
http://www.networkcomputing.com/showitem.jhtml?docid=081904STPtest.

Key Findings:

• The Alacritech SES1001 iSCSI Accelerator displayed superior processing capabilities as shown by its strong bi-directional and IOps performance
• Alacritech uses the native Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator, which lets any Windows®-based computer use iSCSI-enabled storage devices
• Only Alacritech’s iSCSI Accelerator supports failover and load balancing by teaming multiple Accelerators together
• The Alacritech card enables use of the iSCSI link to communicate with switches and storage devices that support in-band management, obviating the need for a separate management connection

“The Well-Connected Awards are the only industry awards given by technologists based on real-world product testing and evaluation,” said Fritz Nelson, VP and Group Publisher of the Network Computing Enterprise Architecture Group. “These awards take the pulse of the technology industry and reflect the best of what IT has to offer. This is an important distinction from any other award program - the products selected in the Well-Connected Awards are unique because they have been graded with the same criteria IT professionals use to make purchasing decisions - truly the most outstanding products and services available.”

About Alacritech SLIC Technology®
Alacritech’s SLIC Technology is a Dynamic TCP Offload™ architecture that is the first fully compatible and scalable architecture to offload network protocol processing including TCP/IP, RDMA and iSCSI from host software to silicon. By efficiently eliminating system and network bottlenecks and maximizing data movement through Ethernet-based networks, SLIC Technology significantly increases system, application and network performance and enables scalable networking to 10 Gigabit and beyond. All Alacritech Accelerator products are based on SLIC Technology and include Gigabit Ethernet TNIC products, iSCSI controller products and IPP ASICs. All Alacritech products offer industry-standard failover and link aggregation.

Availability
The Alacritech SES1000 and SES2000 iSCSI Accelerator lines support Windows Server™ 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000 and are available in both copper and fiber versions through Alacritech’s channel partners worldwide, with a starting U.S. List Price of $479. Evaluation units are available through the Alacritech Product Evaluation Program at Alacritech’s e-store. For more information, please visit http://www.alacritech.com.

About Network Computing
For IT, By IT, Network Computing http://www.networkcomputing.com, published by CMP Media LLC, Manhasset, N.Y., is dedicated to providing critical analysis of technologies, vendors and products to 220,000 IT Managers and Staff who are accountable for strategic technology purchase decisions. In 2003, Network Computing won a total of four awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (ASBPE), including a national award in the Best Technical Article category.

About Alacritech, Inc.
Alacritech, Inc. is the world’s leading supplier of standards-based scalable networking technology and solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems. As the first to envision a dynamic network protocol processing architecture that enables systems to scale to address ever increasing data and network speeds, Alacritech developed and patented the SLIC Technology® architecture. Alacritech’s complete line of Accelerators, based on this architecture, optimize data delivery in servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. SLIC Technology, the basis of industry-accepted TOE solutions, ships in storage and server products worldwide. Alacritech is a privately held company based in San Jose, California. For more information about Alacritech and its products, please visit the company’s Web site at www.alacritech.com.