ParaScale Delivers Next Breakthrough in Cloud Storage Software

Marquee customers building storage clouds with ParaScale technology to address
exploding bulk file storage requirements for digital content and archival data
NEW YORK--(Business Wire)--
ParaScale, Inc., a startup company developing cloud storage solutions, announced
today at Sys-Con`s Cloud Computing Conference & Expo the immediate global
availability of ParaScale Cloud Storage (PCS) software. As a software-only
solution that can be downloaded from the web and applied to any standard Linux
platform, PCS enables hundreds of commodity servers to be clustered together to
act as a file repository with massive capacity and parallel throughput. PCS is
being used by leading enterprise and service provider organizations including
Blue Coat Systems, Carpathia Hosting, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Stanford
Genome Technology Center. Additionally, technology providers including Vembu
Technologies and South River Technologies have embraced ParaScale`s Cloud
Storage software to extend the value of their offerings

Steve Kowalski, senior systems architect at Sony Pictures Imageworks said, "We
have been able to leverage commodity economics in all parts of our
infrastructure, but storage has been the holdout. After realizing benefits
across workstations, render farms, and operating systems, we have the
opportunity to see the benefits of commodity hardware in storage."

"Even in a slowing economy, data growth continues and IT managers struggle with
cost and capacity challenges every day. Today, we are seeing an explosion in
digital documents and rich media in all types of businesses. This presents
significant challenges to storage teams who need to account for rapid scaling of
capacity and performance in an environment that scrutinizes every capital
expense," said Terri McClure, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group.
"ParaScale Cloud Storage harnesses the power and cost-advantages of a standard
Linux server with clustering software into an infrastructure solution that
addresses the need to cost-efficiently store and manage huge amounts of
unstructured data."

Customer Applications of the ParaScale Cloud Storage Software

By combining ParaScale software and buyer selected standard servers, managed
service providers can build different types of public clouds and offer a variety
of storage cloud services, while enterprises can start small and build their own
private, corporate clouds inside their own firewall.

In one example, Sony Pictures Imageworks is testing PCS to see how a private
storage cloud might better the economics of its storage intensive
infrastructure. "We have been working with ParaScale since early in the beta
process and we are impressed with the technology and flexibility of the
software. Having evaluated many storage technologies over the years, we are
optimistic about finding a potential solution that scales in capacity and
performance and targets our content heavy workloads, all the while leveraging
standard Linux hardware," said Nick Bali, senior systems engineer.

Carpathia Hosting, a provider of managed IT Services, is using ParaScale
software to deliver its InstantOn(SM) managed storage services to its enterprise
and federal customers "We have been working closely with ParaScale to allow us
to blend the benefits of traditional hosted solutions with cloud technology"
said Jon Greaves, chief technology officer of Carpathia Hosting. "We see
tremendous demand from our customers for `cloud bursting`. We chose to integrate
ParaScale Cloud Storage into the Carpathia Services Platform (CSP) to provide
customers with a seamless ability to burst into our InstantOn(SM) storage and
compute cloud."

Stanford Genome Technology Center trialed PCS to more affordably and efficiently
manage huge volumes of genomic data. "The latest generation of gene sequencers
starting to be delivered now generate two to three orders more data per run,"
said Dr Baback Gharizadeh, research associate at the Stanford Genome Technology
Center. "We are always looking for affordable, practical ways to store these
volumes of valuable data. Our evaluations of ParaScale's cloud storage solution
lead us to believe that it has the scale and economy to handle our genomic data,
and it is easy enough for our research scientists to manage. "

"ParaScale connected me with a Global 100 firm evaluating its software for a
high-scale public and private cloud storage deployment. This sophisticated firm
has already determined that ParaScale allows them to use a cookie-cutter
hardware approach that provides significant operational benefits and meets their
financial benchmarks in supporting their major build-out," said Noemi Greyzdorf,
storage analyst, IDC. "ParaScale`s flexible, object-oriented file system
allowing scale and ease of management across different pools of storage and will
enable content and general tier2 storage deployments to achieve new levels of
economy and flexibility."

"I`m proud of the ParaScale team today as they deliver the industry`s first
shrink-wrapped, cloud storage solution. Additionally, the team has also
delivered another first with very broad applicability - the industry`s first
object-based cluster file system capable of scale-out on standard Linux
hardware," said Sajai Krishnan, CEO, ParaScale. "Beyond all the marketing around
cloud computing and storage, ParaScale`s very pragmatic approach to data storage
is transformational and will help IT managers address ballooning file storage
costs as well as capacity growth. At ParaScale, our early customers are excited
about storage cloud implementations and dreaming up use cases we haven`t
considered, striving for new levels of economy, operational management, capacity
and performance scale-out. Cloud computing is driving the next generational
shift in IT and as we move forward cloud storage will be a major way that
storage is consumed."

ParaScale Cloud Storage Ecosystem

By working closely with partners, ParaScale looks to change the economics of
storage-intensive solutions in many industries, and thus deliver strong ROI to
customers. Vembu Technologies and South River Technologies have embraced
ParaScale`s cloud software and are working with ParaScale to implement
end-to-end cloud management solutions.

According to Jayavasanthan John, director of technology, Vembu Technologies,
"With the unprecedented and rapidly increasing growth in data across all types
of businesses in the last decade, it is inevitable that storage infrastructure
evolves to keep pace. ParaScale's unique cloud-based storage technology is one
such leading innovation which lets businesses grow their storage incrementally
`on demand,` thus eliminating the need to make huge upfront capital investments.
At Vembu, over the last few months we have been integrating and testing our
StoreGrid online backup engine with ParaScale cloud storage software. This
integrated offering is a big boon to Vembu's service provider partners who are
looking at incrementally scaling their online backup services business."

ParaScale software will soon be available through a broad range of value-added
resellers. Resellers recognize that commodity-scaled, easy to manage and grow
file storage has a thousand use-cases in any IT environment whether the customer
is thinking clouds or not.

"In today`s economy, customers are looking for affordable storage options," said
Jeanne Wilson, CEO, Condor Storage. "ParaScale`s solution provides unbeatable
value for tier2 and content storage, even allowing customers to extend their
cloud by repurposing servers that they already own. This technology is easy to
deploy. It took my sales engineer only an afternoon to figure it out. At Condor
we have always delivered market-leading value to our customers and by partnering
with ParaScale, we are bringing the first private storage clouds to our
enterprise and government customers".

Availability and Pricing

ParaScale Cloud Storage software version 1.2 is available for immediate purchase
and can be downloaded here: http://www.parascale.com. Pricing is based on the
physical capacity within the cloud with deployments starting in North America at
a list price of $1.05/GB.

About ParaScale, Inc.

ParaScale is headquartered in Silicon Valley and is focused on addressing the
exploding bulk storage requirements for unstructured data including digital
content and archival data. By combining ParaScale software and buyer-selected
standard servers, service providers can build different types of public clouds
and offer a variety of cloud storage services, while enterprises can start small
and build their own corporate clouds within their own network. For more
information visit, www.parascale.com.

All product names and references remain the trademarks or registered trademarks
of their respective owners.

Note to editors: Screen shots and captions of ParaScale Cloud Storage software
is available here http://www.parascale.com/index.php/parascale-press-images

ParaScale, Inc.
Beth Winkowski, 978-649-7189
bwinkowski@parascale.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009