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PrimeSource to Distribute Winchester Systems' FlashDisk® OpenRAID Storage System for Networked Printing and Publishing Applications

WOBURN, MA (October 17, 1999) PrimeSource Corporation (NASDAQ: PSRC), the largest distributor and systems integrator of printing and publishing film consumables and computer systems, will resell Winchester Systems Inc.'s FlashDisk® OpenRAID storage system as a PrimeSource ProductionPath® certified product.

PrimeSource tests and selects a series of independent vendors' products to receive the ProductionPath certification. These products have the capabilities to meet the various prepress production and business requirements of the printing and publishing industry. Together, these products comprise a complete electronic publishing system-from workstation to network-that support all standards-based operating (open) systems, such as Windows NT, Linux, Novell, MacOS, and various Unix systems, just to name a few.

Printers and Publishers Count on Winchester Systems' FlashDisk OpenRAID Storage System

Printers and publishers of all sizes use Winchester Systems, Inc.'s external, high-speed FlashDisk open systems RAID storage system as either a LAN-based repository, or as part of a storage area network (SAN) for prepress workflow applications. For example, by eliminating film and going right to plate, Seiz Printing, a 100-person shop in Acworth, Georgia, has to keep the work-in-process image films easily accessible in electronic form until the jobs come off the press. Seiz Printing bought a Winchester Systems' 160-Gbyte FlashDisk RAID storage system from PrimeSource. The FlashDisk will become the external storage component attached to a DEC Alpha system and will support Mac workstations on an Ethernet network.

Bill Marchiony, a systems development engineer at PrimeSource, says that the fault- tolerance feature of RAID storage is a key component of PrimeSource's Production Path certification for a storage vendor. Short for redundant array of independent disks, RAID storage spreads data across a number of individual disks as if they were one large disk. This storage technique improves performance and increases reliability by storing parity information on an extra disk. If any single disk in the array fails, the unit continues to function without loss of data.

Since prepress workflow applications frequently require the daily storing and retrieving of 50-Mbyte (or larger) files, RAID storage has to be able to handle the high I/O demands very rapidly, to provide high reliability, and to provide ample storage capacity for very large imaging applications. Marchiony says, “Winchester Systems' FlashDisk meets all of these requirements. In fact, we heard about Winchester Systems because our information technology (IT) department bought two FlashDisks a year ago. These systems have tripled the speed of transactions on our corporate order entry system. Since the IT manager was excited about FlashDisk, we knew it was time to talk to Winchester Systems about adding FlashDisk to our prepress solution.”

FlashDisk Combines with SANergy for Storage Area Network Applications

Marchiony says, “We also selected the FlashDisk because it can provide shared storage for up to four different types of servers. It's also a nice fit with Mercury Computer Systems' SANergy, another ProductionPath certified product.” SANergy further extends FlashDisk's multiport capabilities to enable storage to be shared across multiple systems and servers in a storage area network or SAN. (A SAN is a pool of storage made available to multiple hosts via a network of high-speed interconnects, such as SCSI or fibre channel.) SANergy takes all the data transfer off the LAN and moves it across the SAN, which speeds up all data transfers.

SANergy offers concurrent file sharing across multiple operating systems, including Windows NT, MacOS, Silicon Graphics, and Sun Solaris. He says, “By combining FlashDisk with SANergy, we've also eliminated the reliability problem that occurred when we've tried to connect multiple servers to a single storage device.”

FlaskDisk OpenRAID Delivers at Top Speed

Designed for use with any open (non-proprietary) server in either a LAN or a SAN, Winchester Systems' external FlashDisk OpenRAID storage system delivers Ultra2 SCSI speed and robustness required for prepress storage applications. By working independently of the server, the FlashDisk can simultaneously support mixed operating systems, such as Windows NT, Macintosh, Linux, Novell, and Unix. FlashDisk comes in four upgradeable models ranging from the one-cubic-foot tabletop, which offers 250 Gbytes of storage and supports two hosts; to the six-foot high data center, which offers 3.6 Tbytes of storage and supports up to 36 hosts. FlashDisk RAID storage systems come with either 9-, 18-, 36- or 50-Gbyte drives and offer RAID levels 1, 3, 5, and 1+0.

Two networking trade magazines-Performance Computing (formerly Unix Review) and Server/Workstation Expert (formerly SunExpert)-have singled out Winchester Systems' flagship product, FlashDisk OpenRAID, as the “World's Fastest SCSI RAID Storage System.” Speed is the key feature that makes the FlashDisk storage system excel over comparable storage systems from leading competitors. FlashDisk delivers the speed that organizations need for (1) sequential applications-including multimedia, Web servers, imaging, and pre-press, and for (2) processing intensive transaction applications, such as Oracle and Sybase.

About PrimeSource Corporation

With annual sales of more than $500 million, PrimeSource Corporation (www.primesource.com), based in Pennsauken, New Jersey, is the leading United States distributor and systems integrator of hardware, software, and consumables, such as film, for the pressroom-both traditional and electronic prepress. The company's 32 distribution centers throughout the United States serve the printing, publishing, and graphic arts industries.

About Winchester Systems Inc.

Founded in 1981, Winchester Systems Inc. is dedicated to providing technically superior disk and tape solutions to a diverse clientele worldwide, including many Fortune 500 companies and federal agencies. Since 1989, customers such as Honeywell, MCI, Motorola, Boeing, Tropicana, Siemens, Ceridian, Deloitte & Touche and the U.S. Coast Guard have deployed Winchester Systems' FlashDisk solutions with great success. Many customers report that FlashDisk accelerates their disk-intensive applications by 100 percent to 500 percent. FlashDisk massively parallel cached RAID solutions deliver fast, simple, reliable and cost-effective access to server data.

Winchester Systems pioneered the concept of “plug-and-play” OpenRAID storage by adhering to strict industry SCSI standards without relying on proprietary host software, drivers, or storage managers. Winchester Systems' FlashDisk competes with RAID storage systems from EMC (NYSE: EMC), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP), and Sun (NASDAQ: SUNW). More information is available at http://www.winsys.com, or by calling 800-325-3700.

Winchester Systems, FlashDisk and OpenRAID are trademarks or registered trademarks of Winchester Systems All other brands or products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders and should be treated as such.

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