SURVEY SAYS NATION'S BUSINESS CONTINUITY/DISASTER RECOVERY DATA THROUGHPUT NEEDS NOT BEING MET

Problems with data throughput increase risk of non-compliance

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn., January 5, 2005 —A recent survey of 170 IT managers in enterprise environments revealed that business continuity and disaster recovery initiatives are being hindered by WAN throughput, and that throwing more bandwidth at the problem does not fix the issues.

The survey, conducted over a 45-day period and sponsored by NetEx, asked IT managers about problems with WAN-based business continuity and disaster recovery solutions. Soliciting the opinions of end users with a cross-section of NAS, array, server, appliance and intelligent switch-based approaches, the survey focused on topics relating to throughput, transport mechanisms and implementation payback periods.

Notable findings include:

• 65 percent said business continuity and disaster recovery WAN throughput requirements are not always being met.
• 62 percent said that throwing more bandwidth at the problem does not fix throughput issues.
• 63 percent said that business continuity and disaster recovery requirements are increasing faster than the bandwidth can keep up.
• 78 percent said that business continuity and disaster recovery WANs should be able to piggyback on the primary TCP/IP backbone.
• 71 percent agreed that the preferred transport for all business continuity and disaster recovery is with Ethernet/TCP versus Fibre Channel/IP.
• 61 percent agreed that the problems associated with business continuity and disaster recovery throughput increase the risk of "non-compliance."
• Half required payback for mixed vendor business continuity and disaster recovery implementation to be within one year; an additional 37 percent require payback within two years.

“The survey’s results lay out pressing business continuity and disaster recovery needs in black and white – IT administrators require solutions that maximize their existing bandwidth, and if they can’t increase their throughput they risk non-compliance,” said Robert MacIntyre, Vice President, Business Development and Marketing, NetEx. “The findings validate that NetEx's Hyper Powered IP™ will answer the most critical business needs, giving users the flexibility to meet throughput requirements without having to purchase additional bandwidth.”

NetEx’s Hyper Powered IP provides the simplest and highest performing storage application optimizer for accelerating the broadest range of storage applications in the industry. These include EMC SRDF Adaptive Copy & SRDF/A, VERITAS Volume Replicator/NetBackup, NetApp SnapMirror & SnapVault, IBM TSM, Softek Replicator and associated applications such as Oracle DB RSync, Microsoft Exchange and many others. Hyper Powered IP leverages common IP networks while enabling high-speed connections up to OC12 –as much as a thousand percent increase in throughput for many applications. Working in conjunction with, or serving as a replacement for a company’s existing high-speed storage transport technologies, NetEx’s unique IP acceleration technology is deployed in a simple appliance-based configuration that easily attaches to an existing network infrastructure and requires no changes to applications or code upgrades to existing network devices. Hyper Powered IP is transparent and non-disruptive to operations and ensures non-stop data availability.

More information on Hyper Powered IP and additional survey results are available online at www.netex.com.

About NetEx
Formed in 1999 as a spin-off of Storage Technology Corporation (StorageTek®), privately-held NetEx has provided the world's fastest data transport in the industry, along with guaranteed data delivery, for over 20 years to more than 100 of the world's largest and most sophisticated organizations, including some of the most prestigious providers of financial, transportation and telecommunications services and government entities. Customers include Telstra, NTT, Verizon, BellSouth, Qwest, British Petroleum, Royal Bank of Scotland Group, LloydsTSB, NDC Health, IRS, American, Lufthansa, Northwest, United Airlines and Kellogg. For more information about NetEx, NetEx/IP or HyperIP, visit www.netex.com or call +1 763-694-4300.

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