ORLANDO, FLORIDA - October 22, 2001 - Ten leading hardware and software storage vendors today announced the formation of an alliance to launch the Open Storage Management Resources (OSMR) program. The new program was created to help ensure product-to-product compatibility and deliver simplified Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions to market. The first certified SAN package available through the OSMR program, "E-Z SAN", provides up to 1.1 terabytes of easily managed storage and will be demonstrated at Storage Networking World 2001 in Orlando, FL, October 22-24, 2001, booth P1.

The OSMR program is unique in that customers can purchase a pre-certified and tested hardware bundle and then choose from a variety of leading OSMR program software vendors' products to easily deploy key applications such as storage virtualization, auto backup/restore and volume management. Participating hardware companies include Chaparral Network Storage, Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. (NYSE: HIT), JMR Electronics Inc., JNI Corporation (Nasdaq: JNIC) and Vixel Corporation (Nasdaq: VIXL). OSMR software vendors include BakBone Software (TSE: BKB), FalconStor (Nasdaq: FALC), OTG Software (Nasdaq: OTGS) and Sanbolic Inc. Designed for workgroup and departmental level companies, the E-Z SAN hardware bundle and software applications are available now through Bell Microproducts' network of resellers.

"The OSMR initiative with E-Z-SAN solution provides the flexibility of supplier choice along with assured interoperability among components, software and systems," said John McArthur, group vice president of storage research for IDC. "Solutions that are hassle-free and avoid the lock-in of proprietary alternatives are a big move in the right direction."

Over the last six months, the OSMR program vendors have conducted exhaustive interoperability testing with all software and hardware offerings to guarantee product compatibility at all levels. OSMR vendors will work closely with distributors and resellers to support E-Z SAN and additional OSMR packages by providing hands-on technical training and education, reducing deployment issues and increasing overall support services to end-users.

"Given that we support and distribute storage networking products manufactured by all of the participating vendors, we see the OSMR program as a significant milestone for the industry and, most importantly, for our customers," said Phil Roussey, executive vice president of worldwide marketing for Bell Microproducts. "Customers rely heavily on us to provide them with the right combination of storage solutions, as well as proactive training and support. With the E-Z SAN solution, we not only offer our customers a highly reliable, cost-effective storage solution, but a high-level of customer support and technical training."

The E-Z SAN solution is comprised of the following products:

• BakBone's NetVault backup/restore software
• FalconStor's flagship software solution, IPStor
• OTG's DiskXtender 2000 and SANXtender storage virtualization and file management software
• Sanbolic's advanced volume sharing software, Kayo
• Chaparral's 2GB Fibre Channel-to-Ultra 160 SCSI JFS224 RAID Controller
• Hitachi's 73GB 10,000RPM U160 Disk Drive
• JMR's FORTRA 10 Raid subsystem
• JNI's 64-bit Single Port PCI-to-Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (33 MHz), FCE-6410
• QLogic's 64-bit Dual Port PCI-Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (33MHz)
• Vixel's 16-port 7200 and 8-port 7100 Fibre Channel Switches

Participating Partner Quotes

"Providing Manufacturer Certified Solutions for the storage and protection of our customers' most valuable commodity, their data, is our ultimate goal," says Larry E. Fox, director of strategic alliances for BakBone Software. "We have an obligation and have taken the necessary steps to ensure that our partners as well as our end-users purchase a solution they can have confidence in."

"Networking Storage remains an intimidating task for most organizations, " Greg Mangold, vice president of marketing for Chaparral Network Storage observes. "The Fortune 5000 businesses have managed to develop expertise in-house to do it. However, the benefits of using storage networking are every bit as great in midrange companies. Chaparral's partnership in the OSMR initiative gives these businesses a plug-and-play E-Z SAN."

"JMR is well known for their products' ability to quickly adapt to the emerging storage needs of customers, and the company's rapid adoption of SAN technology is a testimony to that legacy," said Wayne Lam, vice president of marketing for FalconStor. "FalconStor is happy to be part of this unique initiative to introduce our IPStor software to the numerous storage clients that are currently yearning for a proven storage virtualization solution."

"Hitachi is pleased to join JMR and the other OSMR partners to provide a flexible, comprehensive solution for our customers," said Hal Malone, director of sales and marketing, 3.5" HDD for Hitachi America, Ltd. "Hitachi hard drives fit well in the E-Z SAN solution, providing the high performance, reliability and capacity demanded by today's discerning customer for high throughput operating environments. We look forward to working with this group of industry leaders to meet the evolving needs of the dynamic storage market."

Duran Alabi, director of marketing and business development for JMR noted, "JMR is committed to partnering with storage technology leaders that offer storage products designed with reliable, scalable and robust technology tools that meet the performance needs of our joint storage value added resellers and their data-intensive customers. We are confident that with E-Z-SAN and the combination of our proven expertise of over 19 years experience in creating award winning modular storage subsystems, resellers and end-users will greatly benefit from this vendor consortium initiative to offer a simple and cost-effective SAN."

"JNI has long advocated solutions such as E-Z-SAN that make storage networks simpler and easier to use," said Shaun Walsh, vice president of marketing, JNI Corporation. "Our history of providing customers with broad-based interoperability testing, 24x7x365 live support, and even our industry leading EZ FibreTM Fibre Channel host bus adapter configuration and management software have all contributed to making SANs easier to build and manage. JMR has taken an additional step in delivering a total package solution."

"OTG has been partnering with leaders in storage technology to streamline and simplify storage management for our customers for years," said William Caple, executive vice president, OTG Software. "By participating in the OSMR program, and helping deliver EZ-SAN, we are providing our customers with an interoperable, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy solution for SAN environments."

"A pre-tested and certified SAN solution will enable our customers to focus on their core business and not worry about the components of their SAN," Says Chris Hurley, vice president of sales and marketing for Sanbolic, Inc. "We believe this program will provide our customers a storage solution with a new level of reliability and better return on their investment."

"By working closely with partner companies to simplify the storage implementation process, we are helping both VARs and our mutual end-users reduce their total cost of ownership and increase their return on investment," said Claude Lorenson, director of product marketing, Vixel Corporation. "For years, storage solutions have been proprietary, limiting the number of products available to customers. With E-Z SAN our customers now have the opportunity to deploy a fully heterogeneous SAN with optimum support services."

Pricing and Availability

The E-Z SAN solution is available for immediate delivery through Bell Microproducts' network of resellers and solution integrators, with prices starting at $30,000.00.

About BakBone Software

BakBone Software™ is a global storage management software company that develops and distributes industry-leading storage management solutions. The company provides data protection solutions for open systems environments that are scalable from workgroup to enterprise. BakBone's core products include nearline optical and archival, as well as tape backup and restore software, offering a full suite of storage management solutions to the corporate data center.

NetVault, BakBone's flagship product, offers simplicity of use with unparalleled backup performance. It is a full-featured software solution with a modular architecture. NetVault provides a single storage management solution, from the desktop to the implementation of SAN and NAS, growing with the customer's computing needs. BakBone's other core product is MagnaVault, the industry leading UNIX optical and archival software solution.

About Chaparral Network Storage, Inc.

Chaparral Network Storage, Inc., a privately held company headquartered in Colorado, designs and markets simple solutions to common storage networking problems. Chaparral specializes in high performance, high availability SAN connectivity and data storage solutions, and offers bridges, routers, RAID controllers and disk appliances that are SAN-ready, yet easy to install and use. Chaparral storage networking products feature SCSI and FC connectivity, easy device configuration and management tools, tested interoperability with other leading SAN products, and automatic integration with most popular storage resource management software platforms. Chaparral's 2Gb/sec Fibre Channel appliances allow any system administrator to build very high performance storage networks on a manageable budget. Chaparral's solutions are available through leading storage VARs and Distributors worldwide. Please visit Chaparral Network Storage, Inc. at www.chaparralnet.com.

About FalconStor

FalconStor Software provides the first software-only storage networking solution simplifying storage management while reducing total cost of ownership. IPStor enables companies to utilize storage efficiently, execute backup quickly, and provides vital storage services-virtualization, active-active failover, and capacity-on-demand- running on existing industry standard hardware. By incorporating today's established data transport protocols (Fibre Channel, SCSI, IP) and emerging standards (iSCSI, InfiniBand), IPStor provides both SAN and NAS to companies with immediate total freedom of choice.

About Hitachi

Hitachi America, Ltd., Computer Division, supplies high-performance computer storage products and multimedia products to OEMs, value-added resellers, system integrators and distributors. The division's products include high-capacity hard disk drives and DVD-ROM and -RAM drives, digital multimedia recorders, LCD projectors, CRT monitors, color laser beam printers and flat panel and plasma displays.

Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., markets and manufactures a broad range of electronics, computer systems and products, consumer electronics and semiconductors and provides industrial equipment and services throughout North America. For more information, visit www.hitachi.com.

Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 2000 (ended March 31, 2001) consolidated sales of 8,417 billion yen ($67.9 billion*). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://global.hitachi.com.

*At an exchange rate of 124 yen to the dollar.

About JMR

JMR is an ISO 9001 vertically integrated manufacturer of electronic enclosures for computer peripheral devices. With 19 years of experience in the turnkey manufacturing industry, JMR directs the Fortra product line, providing compatibility and interoperability testing with other technology vendors in the dynamic storage market. JMR is headquartered in Chatsworth, CA, U.S.A. For more information on JMR, visit: www.jmr.com. For more information on Fortra , visit: www.fortra.net.

About JNI Corporation

JNI Corporation is a leading manufacturer of enterprise-level products used to create storage networks, and is the dominant manufacturer of host bus adapters (HBAs) for the Solaris environment. JNI offers a broad line of FibreStar(r) HBAs, Emerald(tm) ASICs, and EZ Fibre(tm) and DriverSuite(tm) software for SANs. JNI's products operate on Solaris, Windows 2000, Windows NT, HP-UX, AIX, Novell, Linux and Mac OS systems. JNI customers, distributors and strategic partners include Acal FCS, Avid, Bell Microproducts, Brocade, Chaparral, Compaq StorageWorks, Consan, Crossroads, EMC, Eurologic, Gadzoox, GE Access, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, Info X, JMR, LSI Logic, McDATA, Nishan Systems, StorageTek, Sun Microsystems, TidalWire and Veritas. Company headquarters are in San Diego, with offices throughout the U.S. and Munich (München), Germany. www.jni.com.

About OTG Software

OTG Software provides next-generation data management and collaboration solutions that virtualizes storage for any type of data, including files, messages and databases, while providing easy and transparent access. OTG's application-oriented approach supports all platforms with open architecture solutions that scale from the department to the enterprise, and integrate seamlessly to store, track and retrieve information. Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, the company has a customer base of over 15,000 organizations and a global network of VARs, distributors, and OEMs. Infinite Storage. Immediate AccessTM www.otg.com

About Sanbolic, Inc.

Sanbolic, Inc. is a privately held company incorporated in 2000 and located in Watertown, Massachusetts. Sanbolic, Inc. is providing the market with the latest software for sharing and access of data. The company's Kayo software enables servers and users of a SAN to share data more effectively. The company has announced Melio, a shared file system with heterogeneous operating system support for all storage systems. Melio will be available in the first quarter of 2002. For more information, call 617-926-2802 or visit www.sanbolic.com.

About Vixel Corporation

Vixel Corporation offers customers real world solutions for storage networking. As a leading provider of Storage Area Network (SAN) solutions, the company's comprehensive portfolio of multivendor certified solutions, switches, hubs and integrated management software delivers reliable, interoperable solutions to its customers and partners. SAN InSite is Vixel's comprehensive open management software for SANs, providing remote control and diagnostics for Fibre Channel switches, hubs and transceivers from a single console, reducing the administration and overhead of implementing a SAN. Vixel products and technology are used by major system suppliers including Avid Technologies, Compaq, Fujitsu Softec, IBM, Lucent, Network Appliance and Sun Microsystems. Products are available worldwide through its network of value-added resellers, alliances and OEMs. Vixel is an ISO 9001 certified company.

For more information, visit Vixel's web site at www.vixel.com. Vixel Corporation is headquartered at 11911 North Creek Parkway South, Bothell, Washington 98011 and can be contacted by phone at 425-806-5509 or e-mail at marketing@vixel.com.