SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 21, 1999--Overland Data Inc. (Nasdaq/NM:OVRL), a technology leader in data storage and backup products, Wednesday announced the formation of a new Storage Solutions Group within Overland that will spearhead the company's move into enterprise storage markets.
The role of the Solutions Group is to assist resellers and
customers by identifying emerging storage opportunities and develop
products and partnerships that will enable Overland to rapidly enter
those markets with seamless solutions that have been thoroughly tested
and validated.
The move is a continuation of Overland's commitment to deliver
comprehensive storage solutions and follows the company's announcement
late last year of an open Fibre Channel Connectivity Initiative,
designed to speed the development of Storage Area Network-capable
solutions built around Overland's award-winning DLT libraries and
autoloaders.
As part of that initiative, Overland is testing and qualifying
its storage automation hardware, including soon-to-be-announced
enterprise tape libraries, with additional hardware and software
components from top tier third-party solutions partners. These will
include backup and storage management software vendors, storage and
archiving software tools and utility vendors, and suppliers of Fibre
Channel connectivity hardware for SAN applications.
The SAN market will play a key role in Overland's new enterprise
solutions strategy.
"The creation of the Storage Solutions Group launches the next
phase of Overland's transformation from a vendor of backup hardware
into a developer of comprehensive enterprise storage solutions," said
Scott McClendon, president and chief executive officer of Overland
Data.
According to McClendon, Overland's move into the solutions arena
is based on two trends: the increasing sophistication of network and
enterprise storage architectures, and the desire among end-user
customers to simply deploy storage solutions rather than having to
develop and integrate various technologies.
Overland is approaching the solutions market with a partnership
approach, rather than trying to re-create all of the pieces
internally, he said.
"Our storage solutions program will combine Overland's expertise
in creating world-class scalable automated storage solutions with
other market-leading technologies from our selected storage software
and hardware partners."
"To eliminate the difficulties involved, cohesive storage
solutions are becoming a mandatory requirement particularly in the
Storage Area Network market," said Fara Yale, chief analyst at
Dataquest.
"It is important that the SAN solution be comprehensive and fully
tested to avoid the complexities in meeting the high-end requirements
of this emerging environment, thereby ensuring reliable, scalable and
flexible solutions."
According to Steve Richardson, vice president, marketing at
Overland, "The company's Storage Solutions Group is focusing on three
key areas: enterprise-class automated storage products, Storage Area
Networks and storage management tools.
"Overland will leverage its expertise in scalable storage
automation solutions and incorporate the technology of third-party
hardware and software partners to provide customers with a new
generation of seamless enterprise storage solutions," said Richardson.
"By working closely with third-party partners, Overland will
ensure that its customer base will have the freedom to choose from a
range of hardware and software products rather than be locked into
proprietary storage architectures," he said.
A key to the Overland solutions strategy is to operate in a truly
open system environment, giving customers the freedom to continue to
operate on platform of choice, including UNIX(a), NT(a) or Netware(a),
and supporting a broad range of ISV backup software, disk storage, and
other solutions components. Overland's solutions will add new
capabilities that complement the existing choice made by the customer
and operate in their environment.
Richardson said Overland will announce the first products to
emerge from the Solutions Group next month at Networld+Interop,
including new enterprise-class library products, and hardware and
software partnerships for total SAN solutions.
About Overland
Overland is a global supplier of storage automation solutions and
related technologies designed to meet and surpass the critical
requirements of high-availability network computing environments, from
entry level to the enterprise.
The company is a recognized leader in technology innovation for
such achievements as the award-winning DLT LibraryXpress SmartScale
Storage(tm) architecture that establishes new standards for
intelligent automated storage and scalability, and the Variable Rate
Randomizer (VR2(tm)) data encoding technology that can significantly
increase the capacity and throughput of linear tape formats.
Overland has also earned a worldwide reputation for unmatched
product quality and innovative warranty programs such as the recently
announced Guaranteed Up Time Service (GUTS(tm)) Program that
dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership. The company's
award-winning products meet the critical needs of end users,
distributors and OEMs in industries worldwide.
Except for the factual statements made herein, the information
contained in this news release consists of forward-looking statements
that involve risks and uncertainties. The company's actual results
could differ materially from those contained in such statements.
Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include
unexpected shortages of critical components, rescheduling or
cancellation of customer orders, the timing and market acceptance of
new product introductions by the company and its competitors, and
general competition and price pressures in the marketplace. 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.
Note to Editors: DLT is a claimed trademark of Quantum Corp.
worldwide.
(a) A trademark or trade name of an entity other than Overland
Data.
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CONTACT: Overland Data, San Diego
619/571-5555
World Wide Web: http://www.overlanddata.com
Steve Richardson, Product Information
e-mail: srichardson@overlanddata.com
or
Scott McClendon, Investors
e-mail: smcclendon@overlanddata.com
Vernon LoForti, Investors
e-mail: vloforti@overlanddata.com
or
JPR Communications
Judy Smith, 818/386-0403
e-mail: jprcommun@aol.com
Home Page: http://www.jprcom.com
KEYWORD: CALIFORNIA
INDUSTRY KEYWORD: COMPUTERS/ELECTRONICS COMED
