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GATEWAY ENTERS SAN MARKET WITH HITACHI DATA SYSTEMS ALLIANCE

Gateway marks its first entrance into the multi-billion-dollar storage area network (SAN) market by announcing an alliance with Hitachi Data Systems that will enable Gateway to sell Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series modular storage systems and associated software.

These systems provide a solid foundation for SANs, allowing customers to pool their storage across servers while improving performance and availability. Gateway's 700-person business sales force will sell the Hitachi Thunder 9500 V Series storage line at industry-competitive prices to Gateway's existing and new small- and medium-size business, corporate, education and government accounts in the United States and Canada. Gateway will maintain a seamless customer experience while working with Hitachi Data Systems' professionals to install and support the products, which typically sell at an average unit price of $50,000.

Gateway also launches the Gateway 840 SATA RAID Enclosure, Gateway 860 NAS appliance and new Gateway System Manager software -- all part of a major new push by the company into the rapidly growing storage market.

"As a provider of leading front- and back-office technologies such as PCs, servers, projectors and plasma displays, we know firsthand that our customers want their enterprise-class storage from a company that is proven in the industry," said Scott Weinbrandt, senior vice president and general manager of Gateway's Enterprise Systems Division. "Our alliance with SAN industry leader Hitachi Data Systems will enable us to enhance our existing customer relationships, as well as compete against tier-one storage providers with an industry-proven enterprise storage solution."

The Thunder 9500 V Series addresses the real needs of the growing networked storage market. This high-performance, enterprise-proven line of modular storage systems are based on an internal all Fibre Channel architecture and redundant and fault-tolerant features that ensure maximum data protection and system uptime. The Thunder 9500 V Series storage systems scale from the single-tray Thunder 9530V storage decks to the recently announced Thunder 9580V rackmounted systems that feature the following industry-leading features:

• Capacity -- 64TB of raw capacity, twice that of its nearest competitor
• Performance -- 7.4 GB per second of cached bandwidth, nearly six times that of its nearest competitor
• Connectivity -- 1,024 Virtual Storage Ports with secure multi-tenancy, a technology available only from Hitachi; and, 2,048 LUNs, four times that of its nearest competitor -- Data Protection & Business Continuity -- Hitachi QuickShadow copy-on-write snapshot software reduces storage requirements for data protection while Hitachi HiCopy cross-system replication facilitates data movement between Thunder 9500 V Series and Lightning 9900 V Series storage tiers

Combined, these strengths make the Thunder 9580V the ideal system for: departmental or SME storage consolidation; enhancing the ability to perform concurrent operations such as business continuity and parallel applications; and effective data replication strategies across the enterprise.

"As part of our open and collaborative partnership strategy, we're excited to have Gateway further expand our modular storage sales reach, which, ultimately, will enable both companies to accelerate their marketshare gains in this space," said Scott Genereux, vice president of Global Marketing and Business Development at Hitachi Data Systems. "Both Gateway and Hitachi Data Systems are working to provide customers with the best value in storage systems through a combination of competitive pricing, industry-leading features, and the highest level of support for an unsurpassed customer experience."

About Hitachi Data Systems

Hitachi Data Systems leverages global R&D resources to develop storage solutions built on industry-leading technology with the performance, availability and scalability to maximize customers' ROI and minimize their risk. By focusing on the customer's perspective as we apply the best hardware, software, and services from Hitachi and our partners, we uniquely satisfy our customers' business needs.

With 2,700 employees, Hitachi Data Systems conducts business through direct and indirect channels in the public, government and private sectors in more than 170 countries. Its customers include more than 50 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, please visit our Web site at www.hds.com.

About Hitachi Ltd

Hitachi Ltd, headquartered in Tokyo, is a leading global electronics company, with approximately 340,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2002 (ended March 31) consolidated sales totaled 8,191.7 billion yen ($68.3 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors, including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's Web site at global.hitachi.com/.