EXHIBIT 99.1
Network Appliance Agrees to Acquire Spinnaker Networks; Accelerates
NetApp Vision for ''Storage Grid'' Future
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 2003--Network
Appliance, Inc. (Nasdaq:NTAP), a leading provider of enterprise
storage solutions, today announced the signing of a definitive
agreement to acquire Spinnaker Networks, Inc., a privately held
company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for approximately $300
million in an all stock transaction. Spinnaker is a pioneer in
scalable system architectures, distributed file systems,
next-generation clustering technologies, and virtualization. For
Network Appliance, this is primarily a software technology acquisition
that reaffirms the NetApp business model and extends NetApp leadership
in scalability, simplicity, and total cost of ownership for enterprise
storage systems. This acquisition accelerates the delivery of the
NetApp(R) "Storage Grid" architecture enabling customers to leverage
even more value from their storage and data infrastructures. The
combination of Network Appliance and Spinnaker gives Network Appliance
a competitive, leadership position in bringing Storage Grid
architectures to market more quickly, and draws upon the technology
prowess of each company to offer superior storage solutions today.
Equally applicable to SAN (storage area network) and NAS
(network-attached storage) environments, Storage Grids are the ideal
complement to the grid computing paradigm promoted by other technology
industry leaders. Storage Grids offer rapid and simple scalability of
capacity, performance, availability, quality of service, and/or
connection protocols on demand; a unified view and management of all
corporate data far surpassing today's limited virtualization
approaches; and optimized performance for remote data access in
distributed enterprises. The Storage Grid architecture will enable
tighter application integration with database and enterprise
applications, provide superior data protection, have the ability to
more easily manage data resources based on policies, and provide
improved data security. The NetApp Storage Grid architecture will
offer these benefits leveraging commodity component costs which
dramatically lower customers' acquisition, expansion, and management
costs. In other words, the NetApp Storage Grid architecture is an
ideal platform for next-generation information lifecycle management
(ILM).
Dan Warmenhoven, CEO of Network Appliance, said, "Today's business
demands fast, reliable, secure access to data and robust new
approaches for information lifecycle management. The combination of
NetApp unified storage and software solutions with advanced
distributed systems architectures from Spinnaker further accelerates
the shift to networked storage and speeds our ability to deliver
powerful new Storage Grids as the foundation for data infrastructures
of the future. Data-intensive enterprises benefit from higher
performance, more flexibility and scalability, increased
infrastructure reliability, and much tighter integration with database
and layered applications."
Ron Bianchini, president, CEO, and co-founder of Spinnaker,
continued, "The combination of Network Appliance and Spinnaker enables
us to more quickly deliver what our customers are asking for --
flexible data infrastructure that offers high performance, massive and
simple scalability, and tremendous data availability and security.
Network Appliance's leadership position in networked storage, history
of innovation, global sales and support capabilities, cultural fit
with Spinnaker, and financial health are very compelling for us to
bring our technologies and products to more customers, helping them
maximize their current data infrastructure returns while preparing for
an exciting Storage Grid future."
Steve Duplessie, principal analyst at Enterprise Storage Group,
added, "Spinnaker is a leader in next-generation storage architecture.
With this technology, Network Appliance is clearly extending its
offerings in high-end storage solutions, and with its ability to unify
SAN by adding Fibre Channel and iSCSI, this has the potential to be a
great move for NetApp. You just gotta love a market leader that
continues to aggressively pursue technology innovations. This will
enhance the NetApp competitive position and time to market with the
next new advance. I can't find a single thing I don't like about this
deal."
"Through the first three quarters of this year, Spinnaker has
shipped more than 75 SpinServer systems worldwide to a broad range of
customers in all of the company's major targeted verticals. New
customers include Acxiom, a data management services company;
Industrial Light & Magic, a Lucasfilm Ltd. company serving the digital
needs of the entertainment industry for visual effects and animation;
Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the United States Department of
Energy's largest science and energy laboratory; and the Salk Institute
for Biological Studies with laboratories focused on the overarching
areas of neurosciences, molecular biology, genetics, and plant
biology," continued Warmenhoven. "The addition of NetApp to the mix
only strengthens the value equation of unified storage plus advanced
distributed systems capabilities yielding massive returns in
performance, reliability, and scalability."
"We recognized the value of Spinnaker's advanced distributed file
system architecture when the firm first invested in the company in
2000," said Promod Haque, managing partner at Norwest Venture Partners
and lead investor in Spinnaker Networks. "Today the enterprise storage
market is highly innovative and competitive, and an important area of
IT investment for leading corporations worldwide."
Acquisition Terms
The closing of the acquisition is subject to the satisfaction or
waiver of customary conditions, including expiration of waiting
periods under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act, and if applicable, foreign
antitrust laws, and is expected to occur by January 2004.
Network Appliance is committed to supporting Spinnaker products
and services. Upon completion of the acquisition, Network Appliance
intends to integrate the SpinServer product line into the Network
Appliance(TM) product family and operate Spinnaker as an engineering
and development site for NetApp in Pittsburgh, adding to existing
NetApp research and development teams in Massachusetts, North
Carolina, and California in the United States, and internationally at
the company's Bangalore Technology Center in India.
Conference Call and Webcast
Dan Warmenhoven, CEO; Steve Gomo, CFO; and Dave Hitz, executive
vice president of engineering, will host a live Webcast and conference
call to discuss the acquisition at 8:30 a.m. EST (5:30 a.m. PST),
today. Supporting slides can be found at www.netapp.com at
approximately 8:15 a.m. EST (5:15 a.m. PST) today.
To access the Webcast, please visit the Investors section of the
NetApp Web site at http://investors.netapp.com/. The conference call
will also be available live in a listen-only format at 800-240-8621 in
the United States and 303-262-2141 outside the United States. A replay
of the call will be available approximately one hour following the
call at 800-405-2236 in the United States and 303-590-3000 outside the
United States, replay code 558676.
About Spinnaker
Spinnaker delivers next-generation networked storage solutions for
enterprises that have demanding requirements for scalability,
performance, and ease of management both locally in the data center
and across geographically distributed sites. Spinnaker is a privately
held company founded in 1999 and headquartered in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. For more information, visit www.spinnakernet.com.
About Network Appliance
Network Appliance is a world leader in unified storage solutions
for today's data-intensive enterprise. Since its inception in 1992,
Network Appliance has delivered technology, product, and partner
firsts that continue to drive "The evolution of storage(TM)."
Information about Network Appliance solutions and services is
available at www.netapp.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains "forward-looking statements" as
defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ
materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a
result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: risks
associated with strategic investments and acquisitions, including the
challenges and costs of closing, integration, restructuring, and
achieving anticipated synergies associated with the announced plan to
acquire Spinnaker; the ability of Network Appliance and Spinnaker to
satisfy all of the conditions to closing and thus, close the merger;
potential delays in the schedule related to the closing of the merger;
adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; delays or
reductions in information technology spending; the transition to new
products, the uncertainty of customer acceptance of new product
offerings, and rapid technological and market change; competitive
factors; war or acts of terrorism; fluctuating currency exchange
rates; and other one-time events and other important factors disclosed
previously and from time to time in Network Appliance's filings with
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Network Appliance
disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements
after the date of this release.
NetApp is a registered trademark and Network Appliance and The
evolution of storage are trademarks of Network Appliance Inc., in the
United States and other countries.
(NTAP - FIN)
CONTACT: Network Appliance, Inc.
Eric Brown, 408-822-3463 (Press)
ebrown@netapp.com
Rod Mathews, 408-822-6108 (Investors)
rmathews@netapp.com