BHF-BANK Chooses StoreAge's SVMTM to Provide Storage Virtualization Management  

Frankfurt am Main, Germany, July 9, 2002 - StoreAge Networking Technologies, an innovator in enterprise SAN storage management, has announced today the deployment of its SVM™ (Storage Virtualization Manager) at BHF-BANK, one of Germany's leading financial institutions and part of the Dutch ING Group. BHF-BANK chose the SVM for its unique asymmetric (off-the-data path) storage virtualization management, Disaster Recovery capabilities and proven performance. The SVM provides BHF-BANK centralized management for distributed enterprise storage, significantly reducing the Total Cost of Ownership. The deployment at BHF-BANK is effected in cooperation with BASIS GmbH, StoreAge's partner in Germany. 

BHF-BANK focuses on Asset Management, Corporate Banking, Financial Markets and Private Banking, and utilizes highly critical financial applications for maintaining these services. BHF-BANK chose the SVM to provide a central point of management for its SAN resources after examining alternative solutions and realizing SVM’s advantages: top performance; support of automatic fail-over between critical  SAN components for complete redundancy; and enabling seamless integration  of multiple servers and storage sub-systems of different brands  into  a centrally
managed, large heterogeneous enterprise storage environment.  

StoreAge's SVM is a SAN appliance that provides virtual volume management in heterogeneous environments. It features storage capacity and storage performance pooling across the entire SAN space. Uniquely designed to virtualize storage off-the-data path, the SVM does not impose any performance penalty and thus delivers a highly scalable and highly available SAN infrastructure at levels not found  with alternative approaches. It is  an  ideal platform for SAN-aware  Storage Applications such  as Remote  Mirroring, Snapshot and  others  and a key  enabler for business continuity strategies. The low cost, simplicity and true heterogeneous nature of the SVM make it a
perfect vehicle for managing new or existing SANs.

The Bank's financial applications are stored in a disaster immune configuration consisting of two distant sites, 11 km. apart. Each site comprises of multiple Sun Solaris SunFire servers, Brocade SilkWorm® 3800  Enterprise Fabric Switches, IBM  Enterprise  Storage Systems (Sharks) and redundant SVM appliances. IBM Global Services provides the maintenance for the SAN infrastructure. This configuration ensures BHF-BANK a high level of data availability, with no single point of failure.  All the  Bank's  mission-critical  applications are readily available, thereby
guaranteeing  the most reliable, fast and accurate  services for the Bank's customers.  This SVM-based solid storage infrastructure enables non-disruptive expansion through the seamless addition of servers, applications and storage devices to the Bank's SANs at any time. 

Carsten  Beyer, Project Manager at  BHF-BANK  noted: After looking for a reliable, high-performance storage  management solution,  we chose  the SVM to centrally manage our organization's storage.  We realized  that  only  an  off-the-data-path architecture such as that provided by StoreAge could answer our requirements regarding a  highly available and highly scalable storage solution. We are committed to providing our customers with the most updated and accurate financial data, and the SVM's unmatched performance helps us fulfill this obligation.

Dani Naor, Director of Business Development at  StoreAge, said: We are  very  happy that BHF-BANK chose our SVM to manage its storage system. The fact that our solution was chosen proves that SVM’s Asymmetric Virtualization is the only architecture well-suited for managing large enterprise SANs such as  this prestigious financial institution running critical applications that require zero downtime reliability.

Stefan Fischer, CEO of BASIS GmbH added: As a system integrator, we are very satisfied with the cooperation among the service organizations of IBM, SUN, StoreAge and BASIS in order to set up a consolidated support strategy for the benefit of the customer. BHF-Bank's project team was also very instrumental in successfully implementing the systems into production at an extremely short timeframe.

Dietmar Wendt, VP, IBM EMEA Storage Solution Group noted: "BHF-BANK is a very important customer in a sensitive environment. We are proud that they have selected IBM's Enterprise Storage  Systems as the foundation for their storage infrastructure. Through  cooperation  with StoreAge and BASIS and the integration of our storage sub-system with StoreAge's Asymmetric Virtualization platform, we were able to deliver an enterprise-class, highly reliable and cost effective solution." 

About StoreAge Networking Technologies:

StoreAge Networking Technologies (www.store-age.com) is a privately held company founded in 1999  as a spin-off from IIS Intelligent Information  Systems (NASDAQ: IISL) and since then obtained over million  of equity  investment from major strategic as well as  leading financial groups. The Company has offices in Irvine, CA and Nesher, Israel, as well as strategic partners in several  European and Far East countries.  StoreAge  develops and  provides innovative storage management software with a focus on Storage Area Network (SAN) architecture. StoreAge is a technology leader  in  storage virtualization  using an asymmetric  design implemented  through  a
SAN appliance approach. The Company seeks to increase and expand its cooperation with major OEM partners, storage systems integrators and storage service providers to deliver advanced storage solutions to the enterprise market.  StoreAge is a member of both the US and the European Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) and of SNIA's IP Storage Forum.   
For additional information about  StoreAge Networking Technologies, visit  our  web site  at www.store-age.com 

About BASIS GmbH:

BASIS Advanced Information Technologies GmbH, was founded in 1995 and is based in Munich (Germany). BASIS has taken  a  leadership  position  in storage management and data recovery solutions. The main  business goal of BASIS is to provide state  of the  art storage  technology solutions to European enterprises. BASIS is focused on the design and deployment of enterprise class  SAN solutions, with emphasis on storage virtualization, backup and archiving.  
For further Information: www.basis-gmbh.de 

About IBM:

IBM (NYSE:  IBM)  is the  world's largest information technology company,  with 80  years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM is the number one server vendor in the world. IBM supports more than a dozen key industries worldwide, works with companies of all sizes around the world to deploy the full range of IBM technologies.
The fastest way to get more information about IBM is through the IBM homepage at www.ibm.com 

Contact:

Mor Abraham  
StoreAge Networking
Technologies Inc.
Technologies GmbH
Tel: +972 4 820 3454 
mabraham@store-age.com 

Russ Ritchie
StoreAgeNetworking
Technologies Ltd.
Tel: (949) 754 0640 
rritchie@store-age.com 

Stefan Fischer  
BASIS Advanced Information
Tel:  +49 89 35 87 36 23 
sfischer@basis-gmbh.de