STEC Stec, Inc. (MM)

Server Design Summit 2011 -- STEC, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEC), The SSD Company™, a leading global provider of solid-state drive (SSD) technologies and products, today announced that its flagship ZeusIOPS® SSD family has been expanded with the debut of its ZeusIOPS XE (Extreme Endurance) SSD -- an ultra-high endurance Multi-Level Cell (MLC) solid-state drive that enables at least 30 full capacity writes per day, every day, for five years. The new ZeusIOPS XE SSD is purpose-built for write-intensive applications and utilizes STEC's leading-edge CellCare™ technology to deliver at least three times more endurance when compared to a standard MLC-based ZeusIOPS SSD. Since these drives can withstand more writes, they reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) in the data center. The new ZeusIOPS XE SSD, announced earlier today in a separate announcement, will be featured in STEC's booth (#107) beginning today at Server Design Summit (Santa Clara Marriott Hotel).

Booth Demonstrations:

STEC will present two product demonstrations at Server Design Summit.

1. The first demonstration simulates a real-world Oracle database environment and showcases STEC's PCI Express (PCIe) Solid-State Accelerator (SSA) performing server application acceleration for a typical OnLine Transaction Processing (OLTP) workload. STEC SSAs uniquely integrate advanced flash technologies into a compact, power-efficient PCIe-based solution. It is managed by a purpose-built SSD controller with native PCIe that provides a direct, low-latency path between the user application and flash. These SSAs reside on the PCIe bus, next to the CPU, to address urgent and critical functions without taxing host CPU or memory resources.  
2. The second demonstration showcases accelerated server-side caching in write-intensive environments featuring STEC's EnhanceIO™ SSD Cache Software and its new ZeusIOPS XE SSD. EnhanceIO SSD Cache Software is designed to accelerate application performance and access to data, and enables server scalability to support the growing number of users and data volumes in the enterprise. This EnhanceIO SSD Cache Software demo uses STEC's ZeusIOPS XE SSD as a performance cache drive located in front of high capacity hard disk drives (HDDs) to show how the full performance, reliability and endurance benefits of SSDs can be optimized.

Technical Presentations:

As part of STEC's participation at Server Design Summit, its product teams will deliver the following presentations:

1. Session 2-102 (Performance Track): "Storage Level Caching - Déjà vu All Over Again," presented by Doug Finke, STEC Senior Director of Product Marketing Overview: this session will present the current trends of using SSDs for adding new levels of storage caching hierarchy to increase performance, and compares it to how the transition occurred with volatile main memory in years past. 
2. Session 2-201 (Performance Track): "SSDs for Server Application Acceleration: Doing More with Less," presented by Sean Stead, STEC Product Marketing Manager Overview: this session will present the latest innovations in the design and development of SSDs and associated software to make servers more efficient. Whether it's hosting more users or more virtual machines per server, this session goes beyond 'feeds and speeds' to explore how SSDs can make next-generation servers do more with less.  
3. Session 3-301 (Cloud Track): "Optimizing Cloud Servers for Cost and Performance," presented by Sunil Daryanani, STEC Director of Product Management Overview: Enterprise servers need to accelerate IO for application performance and server virtualization. This session will present new conceptual solutions in re-addressing the architecture of server-based storage, and will highlight design techniques to enable the cost-effective scalability necessary to support data growth in the cloud and how best to utilize cloud servers to obtain attractive price/performance ratios.

Chairperson's Welcome:

The Server Design Summit Conference Chairperson (and STEC Director of SSD Technical Marketing), Swapna Yasarapu, will provide a short welcome address to begin the conference proceedings.

About Server Design Summit:

The Server Design Summit is the only event focused entirely on the $40 billion server market, featuring tutorials, technical sessions, panel discussions, workshops, keynotes, and exhibits. The conference sessions includes key emerging topics as virtualization and consolidation, cloud computing, green design and energy saving methods, solid-state drives, open specifications and standards, blade and appliance servers, high-performance servers, power and cooling, and low-latency and high-availability applications. STEC is a Silver Sponsor of Server Design Summit.

For more information regarding STEC's enterprise solid-state solutions, please visit Booth #107 at Server Design Summit or the company's web site at http://www.stec-inc.com.

About STEC

STEC, Inc., The SSD Company™, is a leading global provider of solid-state drive (SSD) 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 knowledge and experience to deliver the most comprehensive line of SSDs to the storage industry. For more information, visit the company's web site at http://www.stec-inc.com.

 The STEC logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=1079

STEC, the STEC logo, The SSD Company, EnhanceIO SSD Cache Software, and ZeusIOPS are either registered trademarks or trademarks of STEC, Inc. in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks or brand names referred to herein are the property of their respective owners.

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 PCIe SSA, ZeusIOPS XE SSD and EnhanceIO SSD Cache Software solutions; the performance of these solid-state solutions into the server design market; the adoption of PCIe SSAs, ZeusIOPS XE SSDs, EnhanceIO SSD Cache Software, and enterprise SSDs in general into new applications and markets; and the evolving enterprise storage and server markets. 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. 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: Scott Harlin
         Public Relations Manager
         STEC, Inc.
         (949) 260-8231
         sharlin@stec-inc.com