Back

Overland Data Names Chet Baffa Vice President of Sales

April 2, 2001

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 2, 2001--Overland Data Inc. (Nasdaq:OVRL), a global leader in data storage automation, today announced that it has named Chet Baffa to the post of vice president of sales.

Baffa, who will also be responsible for Overland's worldwide field service and support organization, brings to the company more than 20 years of experience in worldwide sales and marketing of storage and computer products. During his career, Baffa has consistently produced dramatic increases in sales for both large, established companies and smaller, emerging firms.

Baffa, recruited through an extensive industry search, was most recently vice president of sales and marketing for Exabyte Corp., a company specializing in high-performance tape and automation products for midrange IT markets, one of Overland's core markets.

Prior to joining Exabyte, Baffa held positions as vice president of sales and marketing and subsequently as vice president and general manager of the professional services group for Quantum/ATL. He began with ATL in 1995, building a sales team and a comprehensive channel- oriented marketing team for the sale of network attached automated DLT library systems to "Global 1000" end users.

Baffa also worked previously as senior vice president of sales and marketing for Micropolis Corp., where he was responsible for worldwide sales, marketing, customer service, sales administration and development engineering for storage systems. He was also vice president of sales and marketing for Okidata Corp., where he was responsible for establishing Oki as a premier provider of personal printing products.

"Overland is experiencing significant growth, broadening its product and technology offerings, and entering new markets," said Baffa. "I look forward to applying my experience with high-growth technology companies to help Overland meet its aggressive market expansion and sales growth objectives."

Christopher Calisi, Overland's president and chief executive officer, added: "We feel very fortunate to be able to bring to our senior management team someone with Chet's experience in the data storage industry. With Overland introducing several new products last year and in 2001, Chet's addition comes at an opportune time for the company. He will be able to hit the ground running as we expand into new markets and develop new channels for sales and service to a growing customer base."

About Overland

Overland Data is a global supplier of innovative data storage and storage automation solutions for computer networks. The company's award-winning DLT LibraryXpress(TM) SmartScale Storage(R) architecture has set the standard for intelligent automated storage and scalability and established Overland as a leader in the midrange tape storage market.

Today, Overland is broadening its product line and technology offerings to address additional segments of the storage market, including the entry-level small-business market as well as the higher-end enterprise environment.

Overland's patented Variable Rate Randomizer (VR2(TM)) data encoding technology, capable of substantially increasing the capacity and throughput of linear tape formats, is being applied by the company to its entry-level tape drive offerings. It has also been licensed to Imation Corp., Seagate Technology, StorageTek and Tandberg Data.

Overland products, acclaimed for their quality and reliability, are sold worldwide through leading OEMs, including Compaq, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Groupe Bull, IBM and NCR commercial distributors such as Bell Microproducts, Ingram Micro and Tech Data Corp., as well as storage integrators and value-added resellers.

--30--DB/la* JAP/la

CONTACT: Overland Data Inc., San Diego
858/571-5555
http://www.overlanddata.com
Investor relations information:
Christopher Calisi, ccalisi@overlanddata.com (e-mail)
Vernon LoForti, vloforti@overlanddata.com (e-mail)
or
JPR Communications, Encino, Calif.
Judy Smith, 818/386-0403
judys@jprcom.com (e-mail)
http://www.jprcom.com (home page)