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NEARTEK BUILDS FOR GLOBAL STORAGE MANAGEMENT MARKET

Neartek Inc, a leading provider of tape storage software solutions for mixed computing environments, announced that it has received an additional $8 million in funding from Benchmark Capital, Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and Magnum Telecom. The funding will be used to expand U.S. sales and marketing efforts, to continue support of Neartek's growing international customer base and to expand the company's European presence for its Virtual Storage Engine (VSE), a virtual tape software solution that reduces storage infrastructure costs by consolidating tape resources and increasing backup performance.

"The storage software market continues to gain momentum as IT organizations are faced with a daunting amount of data to archive and back up," said George Coelho, general partner of Benchmark Capital and a Neartek director. "Coupled with an economic climate that demands lower total cost of ownership for storage, Neartek's solution offers tremendous market opportunities for customers looking to streamline operations and save money by reducing tape devices through tape storage consolidation. We believe the combination of Neartek's unique tape storage solution, ROI focus, customer base and strong, seasoned executive team will allow the company to strengthen its leadership position in the storage software market."

Neartek's additional funding from existing investors follows the company's successful transition of its headquarters and development center from France to the United States. In the last year, the company has continued to further the development of its flagship VSE product with enhanced support for HP NonStop, HP e3000, and Bull mainframes running GCOS 8 operating system host environments. Neartek also continues to expand its existing international base of customers into North America with two of its first U.S. installations nearing final implementation. Also, the company has broadened its distribution through strategic partnerships with OEMs and resellers such as Tributary Systems Inc and PeakData.

The opportunity for Neartek is vast as tape storage continues to thrive in IT environments. According to Enterprise Storage Group total worldwide tape unit shipments is expected to grow through 2005 to 364.9 million units from 201.8 million in 2001. Storage software is also expected to grow from $6.2 billion in 2001 to $13.6 billion in 2007, according to IDC.

"Neartek improves the efficiency of tape operations in the data center, thereby reducing the overall cost of tape storage. Our solution is especially beneficial for Fortune 5000 companies with heterogeneous host systems, including legacy mainframe and midrange systems, who need a practical, reliable, cost-effective way to manage and store their data," said Bruce Morgan, president and CEO of Neartek. "With our funding in place, we are focused on expanding our distribution arm and executing on customer deployments in the coming months."