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Byte and Switch Insider Releases SAS and SATA Report NEW YORK, June 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Serial Advanced Technology Architecture (SATA) and Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) drives are emerging as major components of multi-tiered storage systems, according to new research from Byte and Switch Insider (http://www.byteandswitch.com/insider). The report, titled "SAS and SATA: Serious About Serial," finds that, while SAS and SATA are the natural replacements for their parallel counterparts as the drive interface for internal storage in servers and personal computers respectively, they both have a promising future in external enterprise storage. "The most common use today for SATA in external storage is in backup staging," says the report's author, Rik Turner. "But as disciplines such as information lifecycle management take hold, it will become part of broader, tiered hierarchies alongside Fibre Channel, SAS, and probably tape." "For the RAID vendors, SATA is a means of offering economy class hardware for secondary storage, while for the tape guys, it's primarily for backup staging and archiving." Despite concerns over reliability, Turner argues that SATA drives will see strong sales -- provided vendors get their marketing message right. Key findings from the report include: -- SAS will sit between high-end Fibre Channel and low-end SATA to address a multi-user, multi-drive, mission-critical, 24/7 market, just as SCSI does today. -- Some vendors favor iSCSI over SAS, since it will be three times faster over 10-Gigabit Ethernet interconnects. They see iSCSI between the boxes, bridged to SATA inside. -- Some customers are, and will remain, uncomfortable trusting any of their data to SATA. -- MAID (Massive Arrays of Inactive Disks) vendors claim a three- to fourfold improvement in the MTBF (mean time before failure) over conventional, always-on SATA arrays. Public companies analyzed in this report: Advanced Digital Information Corp. (NASDAQ:ADIC); Adaptec Inc. (NASDAQ:ADPT); EMC Corp. (NYSE:EMC); Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE:HPQ); Hitachi Data Systems (HDS; a subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd. (NYSE: HIT; Paris: PHA)); IBM Corp. (NYSE:IBM); Network Appliance Inc. (NASDAQ:NTAP); nStor Technologies Inc. (AMEX:NSO); Overland Storage Inc. (NASDAQ:OVRL); Quantum Corp. (NYSE:DSS); Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek; (NYSE:STK)); and Sun Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ:SUNW). Private companies analyzed in this report: Ario Data Networks Inc.; Copan Systems Inc.; Exavio Inc.; Huge Systems Inc.; Nexsan Technologies Inc.; Spectra Logic Corp.; StoneFly Networks Inc.; and Xiotech Corp. "SAS and SATA: Serious About Serial" is available as part of an annual subscription (12 monthly issues) to Byte and Switch Insider, priced at $1,350. Individual reports are available for $900. To subscribe, or for more information, please visit: http://www.byteandswitch.com/insider . Sales contact: Dave Williams Sales Director Byte and Switch Insider 415-293-8470 Press contact: Laura West Outbound Marketing Director Byte and Switch Insider 212-925-0020 ext. 105 DATASOURCE: Byte and Switch Insider CONTACT: Sales contact: Dave Williams, Sales Director, +1-415-293-8470, or , or Press contact: Laura West, Outbound Marketing Director, +1-212-925-0020, ext. 105, or , both of Byte and Switch Insider Web site: http://www.byteandswitch.com/insider

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