SAN DIEGO, CA., July 31, 2000 - Beginning today, companies throughout North America, faced with exponentially growing data storage needs, have a new software solution to help them solve the challenges of securing their most important data more easily than ever before. BakBone Software (TSE: BKB) today announced the introduction of its NetVault™ storage management software to the North American market, saying the software is designed to help enterprises confidently handle their storage needs, both today and in the future.

NetVault is centralized enterprise storage management software, featuring the ability to easily manage the most intensive backup, restore and archiving functions across a wide range of computer platforms. NetVault's scalable, advanced modular architecture operates across distributed heterogeneous client/server and multi-user environments, and is specifically designed for the next generation of network storage applications, such as storage area networks (SANs), as well as today's requirements.

Most importantly, NetVault enters the North American market with a proven global track record of providing robust and secure storage management to some of the world's most renowned firms.

"NetVault is being used in real-world situations at companies such as Sony, Toshiba, Deutsche Bundesposte and NEC, as a product capable of managing the backup and restore functions for mission-critical applications and databases," said Tony Cerqueira, BakBone Software's Chief Executive Officer. "Beginning today, we're launching NetVault in North America, enabling companies here to enjoy the same benefits that their counterparts around the world already have."

Those benefits include unparalleled ease of installation, cross-platform scalability (including Windows NT®, UNIX, and Linux) ranging from the workgroups to enterprise-level installations, and a modular architecture that can easily be customized with plug-in functionality, enabling it to superbly perform in a storage area network (SAN) environment.

NetVault: designed in North America, perfected globally

Today's announcement marks a homecoming of sorts for NetVault: the software was originally conceived more than ten years ago at the Bell Laboratories, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies, while the Labs were still part of AT&T. The developers who originated NetVault did so because they found no other commercially available product fit their stringent requirements for storage management software that could quickly and securely manage the backup and restore function for AT&T's mission-critical data.

In 1997, NetVault was spun off to the group of developers in the United Kingdom who initially designed the software and had consistently upgraded it. From there, NetVault was commercially marketed in Europe and in Japan, where it has achieved a market-leading position. Earlier this year, BakBone Software acquired the rights to NetVault, in preparation for today's official launch.

"The exponential growth of disk storage requires a similar growth in backup to tape," commented Aberdeen Group research director David Hill. "Yet even today, enterprises have a difficult time in backing up all of their critical data as often as is necessary. The problem - made worse by the storage growth - is that backup tends to be a complex process. It should not be. Backup should be easy. NetVault solves that problem for IS administrators throughout the backup life cycle from initial implementation through the never-ending configurations to problem resolution. IT organizations should definitely consider NetVault."

A recent Dataquest report indicates storage management needs are growing at a far greater rate than previously expected, due to the information needs of companies employing e-business strategies, and using key technologies such as data warehousing and data mining. Dataquest analyst Carolyn DiCenzo predicted that the distributed storage backup software market will grow to $5.7 billion (US) annually by the year 2004, up from $. In addition, DiCenzo wrote that her newest estimate might be conservative, indicating room for even greater expansion in the data storage market. GartnerGroup analyst Mark Nicolett, meanwhile, recently stated, "Backup/recovery has become the project that never ends."

About NetVault

NetVault is a versatile, easy to use storage management solution supporting both servers and clients within the Unix, Linux and NT markets. It combines modular scalability with a "single look and feel" GUI management utility (identical for UNIX and NT), advance performance enhancements, ease of use and advanced SAN support, providing simplicity to what was once viewed as a very complex task.

NetVault addresses the needs of today's data centers. From small workgroup environments to enterprise-level Fibre Channel storage area networking, NetVault has the capability to solve today's storage needs, and can scale to meet the demands of their future growth.

Ease of Use

Traditional storage management solutions can be horrendously complex to install, often taking days to implement, due to the design complexity of configuration, device setup and multiple management utilities. By contrast, NetVault creates a new benchmark for simplicity and ease of use. With NetVault, these same requirements can now be finished within minutes and hours, rather than days and weeks, providing users with a significant time and cost advantage. The streamlined, easy-to-use software provides a simplified method of installation, auto detection of devices for easy configuration, advanced scheduling options and on-line help screens that offer unparalleled ease in today's storage management environments.

DirecSAN™ Client Transfer

NetVault's DirecSAN delivers on the promise of the SAN, removing the backup server from the backup data path, maximizing performance, enabling clients to perform robust operations and lowering the total cost of operation. It accomplishes this through its unequalled ability to transfer data over a SAN, directly from a client to a tape device located on the SAN. The data completely bypasses the backup server, allowing it to avoid processing CPU cycles by moving the data across its own bus.

Since the data moves from the disk source to a client bus and then to a storage device via the switched links in a SAN, the backup process is optimized. Moreover, since the devices are shared dynamically, added high availability among clients and servers in SAN configurations are possible in NetVault configurations.

LAN-Free

Storage area networks continue to gain acceptance as a means of providing speedy, centralized access and management to the data storage infrastructure. NetVault supports the widely accepted LAN-free environment, in which data passes through the tape server directly and is backed up directly over the SAN, instead of moved and stored across the backbone or local area network (LAN). In non-SAN networks, NetVault allows library sharing with systems directly attached to SCSI drives, again bypassing the LAN and optimizing backup performance.

Modular Scalability

The number of applications critical to support the data environment continues to increase at an explosive pace. This has typically created problems in delivering on-line backup and storage management solutions, since adding support for these applications generally meant modifying the entire package. NetVault solves that problem.

NetVault's modular architecture is designed with the customer in mind. It features:

• a "pluggable" core architecture;
• flexible device support for NetVault servers and clients, in both centralized and distributed modes;
• point-and-click application plug-in modules (APM™) for seamless interfacing with business applications such as Oracle, Informix, Sybase and SAP; and
• GUI standardization across platforms.

These features ensure that customers' data infrastructures are protected against hardware failures, and that they have constant access to the mission-critical knowledge needed to run their business.

As technology and software advances occur, NetVault easily integrates new applications and support quickly through a plug-in based architecture, without the need to modify its core component. This provides users with the assurance that the solution they implement today will grow with them as their data storage needs grow.

NetVault's advanced design also includes:

• Core Module: The heart of NetVault, the core module supplies the communications and process control across the network for NetVault. Functional processes around the network communicate flow through the core module to supply the backup and archiving function of NetVault.
• Server Module: Designed to be used as the backup server, the NetVault server controls all aspect of the backup and restore process, and includes the index and media management functions.
• GUI Module: Designed to have the identical look and feel across both UNIX and Windows NT, the GUI module provides users with the ability to control any NetVault-enabled device on the network. This makes it possible to control domains (local or remote) from any device (server or client), with the simple addition of the GUI module.
• Device Module: NetVault provides users with the ability to control storage devices in a centralized or distributed manner. This gives users the ability to utilize devices without the restrictions of traditional backup models; i.e., a centralized administrative approach that severely hampers companies' storage flexibility. With the addition of a NetVault Device Module, any NetVault server or client can gain the ability to control storage devices.

The Performance Advantage

Competitive backup products are based on archaic architectures initially developed for less complex computing environments. NetVault is not: it was specifically designed to support today's dramatically advanced storage technologies, as well as evolving SAN technologies that support both LAN-free backup and client transfer. NetVault maximizes the performance of leading-edge tape hardware currently being introduced into the market such as LTO, SuperDLT, Mammoth 2, DTF-2 and AIT-2, and has shown significant performance results over alternative solutions.

NetVault's performance advantage is based on TurboVault™, technology designed to give users direct control of the backup performance. TurboVault allows users to tune shared memory and block size; it also incorporates data pre-fetch and fast cataloging for maximized device speed.

Another factor in NetVault's performance advantage is PowerPress™. It provides the ability to compress client data before it is sent over the network, then uncompresses it prior to writing the data to tape. PowerPress can double the throughput of the data across the network, reduce backup times and alleviate data bottlenecks.

Price and Availability

NetVault is immediately available from BakBone-certified solution providers, in a variety of modular and packaged solutions with configurations to satisfy virtually every network storage requirement, from the workgroup to the enterprise. Pricing begins at begins at $1000 for an NT or Linux workgroup package and at $3725 for a similar package running on UNIX. Both include NetVault server software, and software for five clients, two tape drives and library support.

About BakBone Software, Inc.

BakBone Software™ (TSE: BKB, OTC: BKBOF) is an international storage management software company that develops and globally distributes industry-leading storage management solutions to the open systems markets, providing data protection and management solutions scalable from office to enterprise that will grow with a company's needs.

BakBone's NetVaultTM product is designed to provide unparalleled robustness, and unmatched data protection and recovery to meet the challenges of today's computing infrastructures. NetVault's comprehensive but easy to use features include versatile modular design, advanced SAN support and specialized on-line application backup. The very core of the product is designed with high bandwidth data transfers in mind and designed to ensure that performance is not compromised. BakBone's corporate headquarters are located at 10145 Pacific Heights Boulevard, San Diego, Ca. 92121. Its stock is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and is included on the TSE 300 Composite, S&P/TSE Canadian SmallCap and TSE 200 indices. For more information on BakBone products, call 858-450-9009, e-mail sales@bakbone.com, or access BakBone's web site at www.bakbone.com.

The Toronto Stock Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the information contained herein.

Safe Harbor

The statements contained in this press release that are not historical in nature are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees since there are inherent difficulties in predicting future results, and actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements.