Exabyte announced its joint plans with Fujitsu Siemens Computer for this year's CeBIT Show, scheduled for March 10 through 16 in Hannover, Germany. Recognizing the on-going need for affordable and reliable backup and retrieval of critical business data and the growing trend toward automation of these functions, the two companies will showcase a full suite of innovative, Exabyte-built drives and libraries at CeBIT, billed as the world's largest technology showcase.

"Exabyte and Fujitsu Siemens Computer (FSC) share a common commitment to bringing the most innovative products to market," said Tom Ward, president and CEO of Exabyte. "Our on-going relationship is based on this shared commitment and remains focused on delivering industry-leading products that meet and exceed customer expectations. The CeBIT show is an extraordinary opportunity to showcase the reliability and quality that both companies stand for."

"Exabyte has been a valuable partner to Fujitsu Siemens for many years," said Dr. Helmut Beck, Vice President Storage for Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "Through our strategic cooperation, we are delivering what the small and medium enterprise customers in EMEA demand: reliability and the greatest capacity for an optimal price. We are pleased to offer Exabyte the opportunity to join us in our partner booth at CeBIT where customers can even see for the first time a prototype of the next generation of VXA storage."

The companies will showcase Exabyte's newest tape products. The companies will have on display both LTO(TM) (Ultrium(TM)) tape libraries, now available with LTO-3 drives with 400 GB native capacity, (800 compressed) and 80 MB per second native transfer rate (160 MB per second transfer rate compressed); and award-winning VXA Packet drives and autoloaders. These products have met with remarkable success through Fujitsu Siemens channels, with sales far exceeding projections. Exabyte products featured at the Fujitsu Siemens Computers pavilion at the CeBIT show will include:

-- The Exabyte 221L Plus Tape Library, two drives and 21 cartridge slots, built with ExaBotics(TM) for flawless robotics operation. The 221L comes with enhanced connectivity and remote management features. It is the only library in its class that offers a native Fibre Channel interface, which makes it ideal for SAN applications. It is now available with the LTO-3 drives.

-- The Exabyte 110L Plus Tape Library, one drive and 10 cartridge slots, also with enhanced connectivity and remote management features, is available with an LTO-3 drive. For many users, the 110L is a robust, but affordable first step into LTO automation.

-- The VXA-2 PacketLoader 1x10, one drive and 10 cartridge slots in a slim 1u, rack-mountable form factor, is built with VXA Packet Technology and Exabyte's world-renowned robotics. The VXA-2 PacketLoader provides up to 1.6 terabytes of back-up capacity, 43.2 GB per hour transfer rate, and includes standard features such as a barcode reader, random library operation and optional remote management. The VXA-2 PacketLoader makes feature-rich tape automation affordable for the first time to the huge SME market, opening the door to automated data backup and reliable disaster recovery for tens of thousands of companies with growing data storage needs. The PacketLoader ships with a VXA-2 Packet Drive and includes a rack mount kit, cables, backup software and a cleaning tape -at a price lower than many standalone tape drives. Also, FSC is demonstrating a new optional enclosure for the PacketLoader, designed to meet the high demand from customers without rack-mount configurations who wish to operate the unit from a tabletop.

-- VXA-3 Packet Drive Prototype, the third generation drive with VXA technology, will be on display as a working prototype in the partner booth adjacent to the main FSC pavilion, showcasing the continued doubling of capacity and performance of this award-winning technology per its published roadmap. A formal announcement for VXA-3, including specifications, pricing, and availability, will be issued by Exabyte later this summer.

"Today's VXA-2 PacketLoader is one of our key products to help small or medium size enterprises to automate their backup and restore," added Dr. Beck. "We are also very pleased to have a working VXA-3 prototype in our hands on schedule, which we believe will propel the VXA platform to even greater market success and continued growth."

With the ever-increasing growth of data and the ever-shrinking backup time window, Exabyte recognizes the growing market trend toward automation, which enables enterprises to safely backup data more reliably and efficiently. Through its innovative engineering approach and streamlined manufacturing processes, Exabyte is committed to delivering easy-to-use, full-featured tape automation products to market with the best price-performance ratios in the industry, thus making automation affordable for the first time to the masses.

For more information about Exabyte products, please visit www.exabyte.com.