Cutting Edge Launches New ANStor64 Company to Sell All-in-One NAS/iSCSI Software to Storage Appliance Market; Gary Goodman Named Vice President and General Manager

EL CAJON, Calif., June 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Cutting Edge Inc., a leading developer of custom storage solutions, announced today the establishment of ANStor64(TM), a newly created company dedicated to bringing its ANStor64 OS software to solutions integrators, VARs and OEMs looking to make their own IP storage appliances and systems. Long time industry veteran Gary Goodman has been named Vice President and General Manager. Mr. Goodman recently handled all of North America sales for Germany-based Open-E and western regional sales for Norfolk, VA-based Wasabi Systems.

The ANStor64 company, named after the company's ANStor64 Area Network Storage appliance software, will sell the pre-configured 64-bit capable software as a disk-on-module device that plugs into an IDE port on any industry-standard Intel Xeon(TM) or AMD Opteron(TM)-based server to automatically turn it into a NAS, iSCSI, or combination appliance and can also be used as a diskless NAS head for SAN applications.

"We feel the timing is perfect to launch the new division as more custom server vendors are looking for a robust and high performance operating system that is not only easy-to-install, easy-to-use and easy-to-support, but provides them with strong market differentiation," said Michael Ehman, CEO of Cutting Edge. "We are very pleased to have Gary join our executive team as his more than 28 years of relevant industry and executive experience will be instrumental in helping to expand our market reach. His profound understanding of the storage networking market and extensive experience in developing highly effective sales and marketing organizations makes him the ideal person to lead ANStor64 to the next level of business success."

"My many years of experience in developing and cultivating strategic markets for a wide variety of storage companies will be a strong asset as we start to deploy the ANStor64 OS in the marketplace," added Mr. Goodman. "I look forward to helping establish the ANStor64 software as the de-facto EdgeWare(TM) operating platform for storage-centric appliances across a myriad of markets."

The 3rd generation heterogeneous and feature rich NAS and iSCSI ANStor64 OS software is based on the latest LINUX kernel 2.6. The complete IP 64-bit storage OS offers complete NAS and iSCSI (both target and initiator) functionality and same time use in a single operating system, coupled with best-in-class performance, versatility and security for SAN, LAN and WAN applications. The software's rich feature set includes built-in remote replication for disk-to-disk backup, mirroring, IP failover, multiple snapshot capability, iSCSI target and initiator, web-based management, and built-in security features which makes it a strong alternative to expensive Fibre Channel connectivity, with comparable features and performance. The ANStor64 OS affords almost limitless volume sizes, extremely high performance, increased data reliability, greater security and increased scalability. ISCSI target efficiency is also improved by supporting multiple iSCSI initiators on different volumes, without sacrificing NAS, CIFS and NFS performance.

The ANStor64 OS software will be available to the channel by the end of June. The list price of the software for the AMD Opteron 64-bit, Intel Xeon 64-bit, or Intel 32-bit platforms is expected to be $1,200 for the NAS version and $750 for the iSCSI version. A third version, which allows the same server to act both as a NAS appliance and an iSCSI array is expected to list for $1,500.

About Cutting Edge and ANStor64

Cutting Edge specializes in customized high performance data protection, centralized storage management solutions, and Linux development engineering. For over 15 years, Cutting Edge has supplied storage solutions, custom servers and data recovery services to Fortune 500 companies, government entities, and educational institutions. The newly created ANStor64 company will market and sell the open source based high-performance, high availability NAS and iSCSI ANStor64 OS software to OEMs, Solutions Integrators and VARs. For more information, contact ANStor64 at 1825 Gillespie Way, Suite 100, El Cajon, CA 92020 or visit http://www.anstor64.com.

All trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners.