San Jose, Calif. — April 14, 2003 — Alacritech®, Inc., the innovator of network accelerator solutions that enable fast and efficient servers and storage systems, today announced that the Alacritech Gigabit Accelerator supports Microsoft Corp.’s iSCSI software driver. The Microsoft iSCSI driver is designed to make enterprise storage operations more accessible to a broader spectrum of customers by enabling native support for iSCSI over any Ethernet controller in Windows-based systems. Enterprises using Microsoft storage solutions can seamlessly upgrade from entry-level software-based iSCSI solutions to high performance TOE-based iSCSI solutions enabling them to further take advantage of Microsoft investments in quality and iSCSI interoperability.

Alacritech TCP/IP accelerators are well-known as providing the industry’s highest performance in environments where moving data is critical. Unlike iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) that only address storage, Alacritech accelerators are the only Integrated Storage Network Interface Cards (IS-NICs) to provide hardware acceleration for all TCP-based I/O operations. For example, all Microsoft Windows network applications or services, which include file services, backup applications, and the new iSCSI driver, benefit from Alacritech’s seamless TCP acceleration and direct data placement (DDP) services. Alacritech’s TCP/IP accelerator is based on the company’s patented SLIC Technology® to offload network processing from host software to silicon to achieve outstanding performance in servers, workstations and networks.

“The addition of native iSCSI support into Windows is a significant milestone for the storage industry and Alacritech,” said Kim Peyser, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Alacritech Inc. “Microsoft iSCSI support will be a catalyst for iSCSI adoption, with support now native to the world’s most popular operating system.”

About Alacritech Acceleration Technology
As systems and servers move increasing amounts of network data, new solutions are needed to solve both efficiency and throughput challenges. Alacritech’s SLIC Technology supplements the TCP software control plane with distributed hardware data planes to maximize data movement through Ethernet-based networks. This revolutionary data-path TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) architecture is designed to maximize server and storage performance and efficiency. All Alacritech products offer industry-standard failover and link aggregation.

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 products are 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 iSCSI Consortium and the Storage Networking Association (SNIA) as well as 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.

Press Contacts: