STEC Stec, Inc. (MM)

STEC, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEC) today announced the qualification of its ZeusIOPS™ Solid State Drives (SSDs) for use with Hitachi Virtual Storage Platform (VSP). The ZeusIOPS SSDs provide exceptional transaction speed for high-end storage systems and present an ideal combination that will increase the overall performance of Hitachi VSP, enabling it to operate more efficiently and demonstrate the benefits of scalable tiering and ultra-fast response times, while providing improved energy efficiency. 

STEC's ZeusIOPS SSDs connect to Hitachi VSP through a high-speed SAS interface delivering enterprise level performance. The industry-leading Hitachi Command Suite management software further enhances the SSD-enabled VSP, offering end-users the ability to seamlessly develop and manage storage infrastructures within the virtual data center environment without interruption and with less complexity.

"STEC has distinguished itself among vendors by adapting and fully leveraging our industry leading technologies," said Shuji Sugimito, General Manager of Storage Systems Development, Disk Array Systems Division, Hitachi, Ltd. "Our new Hitachi Dynamic Tiering empowers our systems to take full advantage of high-performance storage media, which is why we chose STEC's ZeusIOPS SSDs. This pairing allows us to deliver a more robust and scalable Hitachi VSP to our customers, helping them transform their data centers like never before."

Maximizing IT asset utilization in today's virtualized data centers that have complex infrastructures and unified management is required to achieve the optimal performance in accessing critical data. Hitachi VSP achieves this by utilizing STEC's ZeusIOPS SSDs as the top tier, or most robust, storage media. As a result, Hitachi virtual storage and server environments offer improved business application availability and performance.

"Following our previous product qualifications together, we have once again collaborated successfully with Hitachi to deliver another state-of-the-art solution," said Manouch Moshayedi, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of STEC. "Today, by integrating our ZeusIOPS SSDs into Hitachi VSP, enterprise IT managers will be able to fully realize the benefits of tiered storage, and of our high-performance enterprise-class SSDs. This accomplishes our primary goal of adding significant value to our customers' storage systems and is another step forward in our pursuit of improving the attach-rate of SSDs to a wider range of high-end enterprise storage systems."

The ZeusIOPS SSD product family offers a comprehensive array of options for enterprise system architects, including a wide range of interface options, from Fibre Channel to SAS, and a broad range of capacity options, spanning from 73GB to 800GB. Fundamental to the ZeusIOPS product family is the proprietary STEC SSD architecture, which enables STEC to provide an enterprise-optimized storage device with an unprecedented combination of performance and energy efficiency.

For more information regarding this announcement and other important SSD topics, please visit the company's web site at www.stec-inc.com

About STEC

STEC, Inc. is a leading global provider of solid-state drive technologies and solutions tailored to meet the high-performance, high-reliability needs of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). With headquarters in Santa Ana, California and locations worldwide, STEC leverages almost two decades of solid-state drive knowledge and experience to deliver the industry's most comprehensive line of solid-state drives to the storage industry. For more information, visit the company's web site at http://www.stec-inc.com

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Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995:

This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including those statements concerning customer adoption and utilization of STEC's technologies and solutions, the benefits from the integration of STEC SSDs across Hitachi's platforms, the capabilities and performance of STEC's products, and the adoption of SSDs into new applications. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including factors that could delay, divert or change any of them, and could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from current expectations. Although STEC believes that the forward looking statements contained in this release are reasonable, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be fulfilled. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements are detailed in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission made from time to time by STEC, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, and its Current Reports on Form 8-K. The information contained in this press release is a statement of STEC's present intention, belief or expectation. STEC may change its intention, belief, or expectation, at any time and without notice, based upon any changes in such factors, in STEC's assumptions or otherwise. STEC undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

CONTACT: STEC, Inc.
         Mitch Gellman
         Vice President of Investor Relations
         (949) 260-8328
         ir@stec-inc.com
         
         Michael Bingham
         Director of Corporate Marketing and Communications
         (949) 607-7783
         mbingham@stec-inc.com