San Jose, Calif. — January 20, 2003 — Alacritech®, Inc., the innovator of network accelerator solutions that enable fast and efficient servers and storage systems, today announced a partnership with OptiFacio Software Services, Inc., a provider of intelligent, Linux-based server appliance software solutions. OptiFacio has certified Alacritech's new TCP/IP accelerated drivers for Linux as fully interoperable with its new OptiFacio ApplianceWare 5.2 network-attached storage (NAS) appliance software, which will provide integrated support for the Alacritech TCP/IP offload engine (TOE). Together, the companies will provide storage manufacturers worldwide with an open, cost-effective, feature-rich storage administration solution for the development of high-performance server appliances.

"Our vision is to enable NAS OEMs with a superior, yet cost-effective server appliance solution based on open standards," said Stacy Kenworthy, president and CEO, OptiFacio. "Based on the performance numbers we've seen, the combined OptiFacio/Alacritech Linux solution is poised to set a new performance standard for NAS appliances at half the cost of existing solutions."

Alacritech accelerators are well known as the highest-performing TCP offload and acceleration technology in the industry and are the only cards capable of moving both file- and block-level traffic. The company's new Release 3 Linux drivers provide acceleration, link aggregation and failover for leading throughput and scalability for a wide range of storage applications such as NAS, iSCSI, backup and replication. The combined OptiFacio and Alacritech solution provides OEMs with a high-performance, low-cost alternative for developing server appliances such as filers that enable more efficient storage utilization, centralized on- and off-site backups and easier management.

"Alacritech SLIC Technology® is quickly becoming the de facto standard in NAS and imaging environments," said Kim Peyser, vice president of sales and marketing, Alacritech, Inc. "Our partnership with OptiFacio demonstrates our commitment to support all NAS platforms."

About OptiFacio ApplianceWare NAS Software
OptiFacio's ApplianceWare is intelligent NAS server appliance software using the company's Linux-based, Common Information Model (CIM)-compliant architecture. ApplianceWare was designed to provide storage OEMs worldwide with true enterprise class features and performance in a cost-effective, open standards based package. The company's new ApplianceWare 5.2 provides comprehensive capabilities including server failover, remote mirroring, snapshot, and integrated support for the Alacritech TCP/IP offload engine Linux version. To significantly simplify storage management in NAS environments, OptiFacio's ApplianceWare features ApplianceView®, a Java-based administration application that enables both multi-device and policy-based NAS administration. OptiFacio's ApplianceWare is available in English, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, German, French, and Russian language versions and operates on a wide variety of hardware platforms. ApplianceWare supports UNIX, Windows, and Apple network clients.

About Alacritech Acceleration Technology
Alacritech's Gigabit Accelerators are based on the company's patented SLIC Technology, and are the only Integrated Storage NICs (IS-NICs) capable of significantly accelerating both IP storage and standard Ethernet traffic. Alacritech's complete line of accelerators are based on SLIC Technology, a TCP/IP offload and acceleration architecture proven to deliver the most efficient, top-performing server and storage traffic acceleration possible. To eliminate the network throughput, compatibility and scalability issues associated with other TCP/IP offload engines, Alacritech's data-path TCP/IP offload enables data movement to be performed by the custom ASIC on the adapter, and TCP/IP connection management and error handling to be handled by the host software.

About OptiFacio Software Services, Inc.
Originally founded in 1996 as ApplianceWare, today OptiFacio Software Services, Inc. is a provider of intelligent, Linux-based server appliance software solutions for OEMs developing cost-effective, feature-rich server appliances for network attached storage (NAS) environments worldwide. OptiFacio's ApplianceWare high performance server appliance software is designed for the international marketplace and is available in multitude of language versions. OptiFacio is based in Atlanta, Georgia and San Jose, California, and has offices in the United Kingdom and Asia. For more information about OptiFacio and its products, please visit the company's Web site at www.optifacio.com, or call 510-386-3270.

About Alacritech, Inc.
Alacritech, Inc. was founded by Larry Boucher, creator of the SCSI interface, to deliver upon his vision of eliminating the server bottleneck. Today, Alacritech is the innovator of network accelerator solutions that enable fast and efficient servers and storage systems. Alacritech's complete line of high-performance server and storage accelerators is based on the company's patented SLIC (session-layer interface control) Technology to optimize the performance of servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. SLIC Technology is the first fully compatible and scalable technology to offload network protocol processing, primarily TCP/IP, from software on the host system to silicon on the adapter. Based in San Jose, California, Alacritech is privately held. Alacritech is a member of the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance and the Storage Networking Association (SNIA) and a founding member of the SNIA IP Storage Forum. For more information about Alacritech and its products, please visit the company's Web site at www.alacritech.com.

Alacritech, the Alacritech logo, SLIC Technology, and the SLIC Technology logo are registered trademarks of Alacritech, Inc. in the United States. OptiFacio, ApplianceWare and ApplianceView are trademarks of OptiFacio. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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