Westborough, Mass., Jan. 16, 2013 – ExaGrid Systems, Inc. (www.exagrid.com), the leader in scalable and cost-effective disk-based backup solutions with data deduplication, has been honored by two prestigious IT industry publications. ExaGrid was selected by IDG’s InfoWorld as one of the recipients of the 2013 Technology of the Year. Additionally, ExaGrid was named a Storage Magazine’s 2012 Product of the Year award finalist. The high-profile recognition further validates ExaGrid’s approach, which includes its unique GRID-scalable architecture that permanently maintains a fixed-length backup window as data grows, protecting IT budgets and avoiding costly forklift upgrades.

The industry accolades, both announced this month, include the following:

Winner, InfoWorld 2013 Technology of the Year Award: ExaGrid’s EX Series of disk-based backup with deduplication was selected as a result of a review by InfoWorld’s Test Center.

• The annual awards identify the best and most innovative products on the IT landscape. Winners are drawn from all of the products tested during the past year, with the final selections made by InfoWorld’s Test Center staff. All products reviewed by the Test Center are eligible to win.
• In a review published on the InfoWorld website, reviewer Matt Prigge wrote the following: “Although data deduplication has become fairly common, not all backup appliances are created equal; the real trick is providing seamless scalability and offsite replication capabilities. ExaGrid’s scale-out architecture guarantees that even as your data grows, your backup windows won’t. Each of the seven available models offers a balanced blend of performance and capacity, and they can combine into a single grid that spreads deduplicated data evenly across all grid members. This unique scale-out grid architecture — and a truly refreshing dedicated support model — sets ExaGrid apart from the pack and into a class of its own.”

Finalist, Storage Magazine/SearchStorage.com 2012 Products of the Year competition: This was the third year that ExaGrid has been selected as a finalist.

• ExaGrid’s EX130 Encrypted Disk Backup with Deduplication System with Secure ERASE, was one of just eight finalists selected in the category of disk backup hardware.
• The EX130-GRID-SEC is a disk-based backup system with deduplication that accommodates up to 130 TB full backup and can hold up to 16 weeks of retention. The system has up to 2.6 PB of logical storage capabilities. Secure ERASE is a feature that overwrites the affected disk areas, so data is no longer accessible, ensuring that organizations can comply when required to remove backup data from ExaGrid’s disk-based backup appliance. It’s fully compliant with Department of Defense and National Institute of Standards and Technology standards.
• Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com editors and other storage industry experts along with storage users judged the entries and selected finalists based on: innovation, performance, ease of integration into environment, ease of use and manageability, functionality and value.

Supporting Quote:

Bill Andrews, president and CEO for ExaGrid: “We’re thrilled that two highly respected industry publications have recognized the advantages of ExaGrid’s unique approach to disk-based backup with deduplication, which combines compute with capacity as data grows along with a landing zone for rapid restores. Only ExaGrid offers a disk backup system that customers can purchase knowing they will have permanently short backup windows, no costly forklift upgrades, the fastest full system restores, and rapid restores of files, VMs and objects in minutes instead of hours with competing systems. This industry recognition speaks volumes about ExaGrid’s winning approach in today’s reality of tight IT budgets and data growth rates of 30 percent or higher.”

About ExaGrid’s Technology:
The ExaGrid system is a plug-and-play disk backup appliance that works with existing backup applications and enables faster and more reliable backups and restores. Customers report that backup time is reduced by up to 90 percent over traditional tape backup. ExaGrid’s patented zone-level data deduplication technology reduces the amount of disk space needed by a range of 10:1 to as high as 50:1 or more, resulting in a cost comparable to traditional tape-based backup.

About ExaGrid Systems, Inc.:
ExaGrid offers the only disk-based backup appliance with data deduplication purpose-built for backup that leverages a unique architecture optimized for performance, scalability and price. ExaGrid is the only solution that combines compute with capacity and a unique landing zone to permanently shorten backup windows, eliminate expensive forklift upgrades, achieve the fastest full system restores and tape copies, and rapidly restore files, VMs and objects in minutes. With offices and distribution worldwide, ExaGrid has more than 5,200 systems installed at more than 1,600 customers, and more than 320 published customer success stories.

ExaGrid is a registered trademark of ExaGrid Systems, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.