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Overland Data Leads the First Consortium Dedicated to 2 Gigabit Serverless Backup; Industry Leaders Form Strategic Partnership to Enhance 2 Gb/s SAN Backup Performance

January 2, 2002
SAN DIEGO, Jan 2, 2002 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Overland Data, Inc. (NASDAQ:OVRL), a market leader in enterprise and mid-range tape automation solutions, today announced it has joined forces with Computer Associates (CA), QLogic Corp. and nStor Technologies to promote the adoption and maximize the performance of 2 Gb/s serverless backup for Fibre Channel-based Storage Area Network (SAN) environments.

By joining with other storage industry notables, Overland and its partners are able to offer tested and proven end-to-end serverless backup solutions in 1 and 2 Gb/s Fibre Channel environments.

Neo Fibre Channel libraries enable companies to double or quadruple their SAN backup performance by providing fast "Data Mover" functionality, a key to serverless backup. The Neo's Data Mover function, when managed by serverless-aware software like Computer Associate's BrightStor or ArcServe, provides the means for backing up a company's SAN-based data directly from disk to tape.

In addition to enhancing system backup performance, serverless backup offloads the I/O intensive data movement operation from the server, making its system resources and bandwidth available for other processes.

"Everyone understands that data amounts are exploding, manpower is diminishing, and the backup window is shrinking. Today's IT administrators need a way to backup and restore quickly, without burdening the overtaxed servers," said Dave Morton, director of product management, Overland Data. "That's why it's so important for customers to have access to a proven backup solution, free of guesswork. By leveraging our longtime relationships with CA, QLogic and nStor, our customers are guaranteed an exhaustively tested, end-to-end, ready-to-use solution."

Overland's Neo series LXN2000 and LXN4000 were the first tape libraries to support serverless backup and restore functions over a 2 Gb/s SAN. This innovative capability is standard with all Fibre-ready Neo libraries. Other features unique to Overland's Fibre Channel architecture include independent ports that can be grouped as pairs, providing dual path redundancy for mission critical backup needs, and scalability supporting up to eight 2 Gb/s ports capable of over 1.2 Gigabytes per second of sustained Fibre Channel bandwidth for today's and tomorrow's high performance tape technology.

Key benefits of Overland's 2 Gb/s serverless backup technology include:

    --  Plug and Play, no software keys or additional cost
    --  Supports up to nine concurrent serverless backup streams per
        port
    --  Provides investment protection by supporting both 1-2 Gb/s
        SANs
    --  Certified with existing serverless configurations of CA's
        BrightStor and ArcServe
"Computer Associates is pleased to certify the 1 and 2 Gb/s Neo tape libraries in our serverless environment. This capability eliminates the connectivity bottleneck," said Philip Treide, vice president of marketing, Computer Associates. "We are excited about the Fibre-ready Neo series tape library by Overland and its potential in serverless backup applications. We believe the Neo series libraries and interconnectivity options, in combination with CA's BrightStor Enterprise Backup, will provide customers with flexible, high performance solutions."

"IT professionals are demanding backup and restore solutions that can accommodate the amount of mission-critical data currently being generated by their company operations," said Joseph Kimpler, director of business alliances, QLogic Corp. "With Overland's integrated serverless backup technology, their Neo series tape libraries provide the perfect application for tapping into the power of the industry's only 2Gb end-to-end storage infrastructure from QLogic."

"The Overland Neo series libraries provide complementary scalable performance and capacity for our 2Gbit 3000 Series of modular RAID arrays, " said Tom Piacentini vice president of marketing, nStor Technologies. "The flawless interoperability with the tape, software, and RAID storage system provides the customer with a tested SAN solution, removing any complexities of deploying a SAN architecture."

    About the Consortium
Overland Data, CA, QLogic and nStor welcome other leading vendors to join the 2 Gigabit Serverless Backup Consortium. For more details or to join the consortium, contact Mike Gearhart, alliance programs manager, Overland Data at 858-503-4375.

    About Neo series
Overland's Neo series LXN2000 and LXN4000 libraries establish new benchmarks in high availability and non-stop operation to modular tape library design. By delivering 24 TB capacity and an advanced feature set, Neo brings affordable, enterprise-level performance to both large and small operating environments. Each 10U-high LXN4000 tape library base module supports up to four drives and 52 media slots while each 5U-high LXN2000 library module supports one or two drives and 26 media slots.

Each multi-module Neo system can operate as a single library or as individual virtual partitions for maximum flexibility. For optimal compatibility and performance, Neo supports Super DLTtape or DLT8000 drives and will soon support LTO Ultrium.

Overland products are backed by the company's innovative Guaranteed Up-Time Service (GUTS(TM)) warranty program, ensuring 99% up-time performance, the only guarantee of its kind in the industry. All Neo series libraries come standard with one year of on-site service, followed by two additional years of factory warranty.

    Availability
The Fibre Channel LXN2000 is currently shipping in volume. Volume production of the LXN4000 is planned for Q1 2002. Click here for more details.

    About Overland
Overland Data, Inc. is a global supplier of innovative data storage and storage automation solutions for computer networks. The Company's reputation for delivering high availability products, as well as its award-winning SmartScale Storage(R) architecture which set the standard for intelligent automated storage and scalability, has established Overland as a leader in the enterprise and mid-range tape automation market. Overland sells its products worldwide through leading OEMs, commercial distributors, storage integrators and value-added resellers.

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 or future 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 economic conditions and 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 and its competitors, general competition and price pressures in the marketplace and the company's ability to control costs and expenses. 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.

    http://www.overlanddata.com
CONTACT:          Overland Data, Inc.
                  Investor Relations:
                  Cynthia Bond, 858/571-5555
                  cbond@overlanddata.com
                  or
                  Vernon LoForti, 858/571-5555
                  vloforti@overlanddata.com
                  or
                  Mentus, Inc.
                  Public Relations:
                  Chris Dale, 858/455-5500
                  cdale@mentusonline.com

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