San Jose, Calif. — October 1, 2003 — Alacritech®, Inc., the innovator of data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems, today announced its Alacritech Accelerators, running in conjunction with the Microsoft iSCSI initiator, have met Cisco’s testing criteria for interoperability with the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer storage area networking (SAN) switches. The solutions are designed to enable efficient data management and high reliability with a low overall cost of ownership in IP storage environments.

“The combined Alacritech and Cisco iSCSI solution will help customers cost effectively connect servers hosted on IP to storage arrays and tape libraries, either with native iSCSI connections or Fibre Channel translation,” said Bill Erdman, director of Storage Industry Alliances at Cisco. “These iSCSI solutions increase the number of options for customers in hosting storage across networks, including the familiarity and installed base advantages that IP offers for many small-to-mid size companies.”

The Cisco testing program sets criteria for interoperability testing under specified test criteria. The program provides enterprise customers with information regarding Cisco partner products and services that the partner or an independent testing group has tested and found to interoperate with the specified Cisco networking technology under the test conditions.

The Cisco MDS 9000 Family provides intelligent networking features such as multiprotocol and multitransport integration, Virtual SANs, advanced security, sophisticated debug analysis tools, and unified SAN management. Alacritech Accelerators provide the industry’s highest-performing TCP offload and acceleration technology, and are the only cards capable of moving both file- and block-level traffic. When used with the Microsoft iSCSI initiator, Alacritech Accelerators offer a very high level of performance for iSCSI storage access for Microsoft Windows-based servers. When combined, IT administrators can rely upon these proven solutions to help drive SAN consolidation, increase data availability and ensure efficient management of storage resources.

“Alacritech continues to work closely with Cisco to provide our mutual customers with interoperable, highly efficient IP SAN solutions,” said Kim Peyser, senior vice president of Sales and Marketing, Alacritech, Inc. “The combination of Alacritech Accelerators and the Cisco MDS 9000 Family are ideal for companies looking to implement a scalable, high performance IP storage environment for their Windows-based systems.”

About Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Switches
The Cisco MDS 9000 Family of multilayer directors and fabric switches offer intelligent fabric-switching services that realize maximum performance while ensuring high reliability levels. They combine robust and flexible hardware architecture with multiple layers of network and storage management intelligence. This powerful combination enables highly available, scalable storage networks that provide advanced security and unified management features.

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 Accelerators are a complete line of Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet TNIC products based on SLIC Technology®, Alacritech’s patented Data Path Offload (DPO) architecture. 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 architecture is designed to maximize server and storage performance and efficiency. All Alacritech products offer industry-standard failover and link aggregation.

Availability
Alacritech Gigabit TNICs support Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003 operating systems, and are available for $999 (copper version) or $1,399 (fiber version) by calling 408.487.5720 or by visiting http://www.alacritech.com.

About Alacritech, Inc.
Alacritech, Inc., led by industry visionary Larry Boucher, was founded to provide data acceleration solutions that enable the highest performance and efficiency in networked systems. Today, Alacritech is the world’s leading supplier of TCP Offload Engine (TOE) Network Interface Card (TNIC) solutions. Alacritech’s complete line of Accelerators is based on the company’s patented SLIC Technology to optimize data delivery in servers, network-attached storage and iSCSI storage devices. SLIC Technology, the first fully compatible and scalable TOE technology, is being delivered in the industry’s leading storage and server products. 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.

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