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Collegis Slashes Backup and Recovery by 40 Percent with Overland's High-Performance REO Disk-Based Appliance

June 22, 2004
Leading-edge Backup Solution Protects Critical Courseware for Colleges and Universities Nationwide

SAN DIEGO, Jun 22, 2004 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX/ -- Overland Storage, Inc. (Nasdaq: OVRL), the leading provider of backup and recovery solutions, today announced that Collegis, an operating unit of SunGard, has deployed five REO(TM) disk-based backup and recovery systems to optimize its backup and recovery of critical courseware for colleges and universities nationwide. Overland's REO 4000 plays a pivotal role in safeguarding more than 33,000 courses that comprise the company's course management systems.

Collegis offers a host of academic, administrative and technology-related solutions to improve the delivery of education, and increase student recruitment and retention while growing revenues and reducing costs. "The REO 4000 reinforces our commitment to ensuring the highest levels of service quality and consistency," said John Tran, IT manager for Collegis. "As a key component in our overall business continuity strategy, the cost-effective REO system provides near-instantaneous restores and significantly shorter backup windows with unprecedented speed, flexibility and reliability."

The REO 4000 complements Collegis' existing tape library system while reducing backup and restore windows considerably. Previously, slow tape backups and cumbersome restores were further complicated by the fact that the library held only 30 days of data. The process of retrieving offsite tapes and restoring data outside of the rolling 30-day window took four to eight hours, which became unacceptable for ensuring the recovery of course materials that might be needed in time for a class. Now, Collegis completes backups and restores up to 40 percent faster by performing disk-to-disk backups first and then offloading the data to tape without impacting network performance. Overall efficiency improvements and storing more data on disk make it easy to maintain up to 120 days of records in its onsite tape library.

For Collegis, backup and recovery operations now can be handled by one individual in comparison to the previous method, which required three people to support. Also, the REO 4000 integrates seamlessly with the company's backup software packages, while enabling them to reduce from three software packages to two. "With the REO 4000 in place, we can leverage our existing technology investments in software, extend the life of our tape library, as well as lower administrative requirements," added Tran. "Simply put, the REO 4000 has completely transformed our backup and recovery operations."

According to Robert Scroop, vice president and general manager, Storage Resource Business Unit, Overland Storage, the REO 4000 is an ideal disk-to-disk system that also lets Collegis better utilize its tape library for a complete disk-to-disk-to-tape solution. "The REO 4000 helps Collegis achieve the instant data recovery advantages of disk backup as well as the long-term archival benefits of tape," he said. "Additionally, the appliance can operate as either disk or virtual tape to simplify integration with existing backup and recovery software, while easing daily management of backup procedures."

Introduced in April 2004, the REO 4000 is Overland's next-generation disk-based backup and recovery product that supports data transfer rates of up to 300 GB per hour, performing significantly faster than many other disk-based products. The easy-to-install, preconfigured system incorporates high-capacity, serial ATA disks, specialized software, both iSCSI and Fibre Channel connectivity and RAID 5 capabilities. When integrated with tape automation, such as Overland's NEO Series(R) of tape libraries, REO provides a comprehensive disk-to-disk-to-tape solution.

The REO 4000 is available through select Overland partners. For more information, please visit www.overlandstorage.com.

About Overland Storage

For more than 20 years, Overland Storage has delivered world-class data protection solutions designed to ensure business continuity. Focused on backup and recovery, Overland's data protection solutions are designed for midrange-computer environments. These include NEO SERIES, the award-winning automated storage libraries that set the standard for intelligent, automated and scalable storage, and REO, the family of high-performance disk-based backup appliances. Overland sells its products worldwide through leading OEMs, commercial distributors, storage integrators and value-added resellers. For more information, visit Overland's website at www.overlandstorage.com.

Except for the factual statements made herein, the information contained in this news release consists of forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Words and expressions reflecting optimism and satisfaction with current prospects, as well as words such as "believe," "intends," "expects," "plans," "anticipates" and variations thereof, identify forward-looking statements, but their absence does not mean that a statement is not forward looking. Such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of performance and the company's actual results could differ materially from those contained in such statements. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include technology spending levels, unexpected shortages of critical components, rescheduling or cancellation of customer orders, loss of a major customer, the timing and market acceptance of new product introductions by the company, its competitors or its licensees, including the launch of the company's new REO and NEO 8000 products, the timing and amount of licensing royalties, general competition and price pressures in the marketplace, the company's ability to control costs and expenses and economic conditions. Reference is also made to other factors set forth in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the "Risk Factors," "Management's Discussion and Analysis" and other sections of the company's Form 10-K for the most recently completed fiscal year. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this release and the company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, events or circumstances after the date of this release.

All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

SOURCE Overland Storage, Inc.

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