MONOSPHERE’S® STORAGE HORIZON™ NAMED A PRODUCT OF THE YEAR WINNER
BY STORAGE MAGAZINE AND SEARCHSTORAGE.COM

STORAGE HORIZON™ WINS SILVER IN STORAGE MANAGEMENT

Redwood City, CA – February 17, 2006 – MonoSphere® Inc., an independent storage management software innovator, announced that Storage Horizon™ won the Silver award in the Storage Management category in the very prestigious STORAGE PRODUCTS OF THE YEAR 2005.  Each year, the editors of Storage magazine and SearchStorage.com, working with a panel of judges made up of users and industry analysts, choose the year's Product of the Year winners.  They award the products which make a storage manager's life easier and more efficient, reduce infrastructure costs, and make a company's data more secure and accessible.   Their awards are based on the following criteria:

• Ease of integration into existing environments
• Functionality
• Innovation
• Manageability
• Performance
• Value

Storage Horizon scored high marks for its technical prowess and cost-saving features. "Few capacity-planning tools are agent-less," said a judge. Furthermore, the ability to create advanced queries, detailed forecasting, dashboard and e-mail notification, heterogeneous device support and management reporting all contribute to making MonoSphere's Storage Horizon a useful tool that will make the job of any storage manager a lot easier and more productive.   "This is an excellent management tool," said one judge.

“IT managers have an urgent need to establish well-defined systematic storage capacity planning processes for open systems,” said Laura DuBois, Research Director of Storage Software at IDC.  “Solutions such as Storage Horizon are at the center of these processes, helping managers conserve CapEx dollars and smooth out the storage supply chain.”

Storage Horizon software is used by Fortune 1000 companies as the centerpiece of their systematic storage capacity planning processes aimed at drastically reducing their Capital Expense (CapEx) spending for storage infrastructure.  Storage infrastructure spending has become a top of mind issue as new applications’ insatiable thirst for computer storage has grown exponentially.  Despite shrinking unit costs, yearly storage costs are rising faster than overall IT budget growth and have become an increasingly large part of the total IT hardware budget.  Despite this financial conundrum, average storage usage averages around 40% on non-mainframe systems*, meaning organizations are buying more than twice as much storage as they are actually using.  This low utilization is what Storage Horizon helps IT organizations target and improve, significantly reducing CapEx spending.

“We are honored to be named a Product of the Year winner by Storage magazine’s expert panel. Since we announced Storage Horizon late last year, we have experienced tremendous interest from mid to large size enterprises who are looking to optimize their storage resources while proactively planning for on-going storage purchases,” said Ray Villeneuve, MonoSphere’s chairman, president, and CEO.

About MonoSphere
MonoSphere, an independent storage management software innovator, helps large to mid-size enterprises forecast, plan, and optimize their storage capacity. MonoSphere’s agent-less software provides customers with the strategic insight they need to maximize resource utilization while proactively planning for future demand. Unlike first-generation reporting tools, MonoSphere delivers clear, accurate, and actionable recommendations so customers can increase their service levels while reducing capital expenditures – all without assuming unnecessary risks that can compromise business processes.

MonoSphere is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and is led by a team of proven innovators in enterprise management and storage infrastructure software markets. Customers include financial services, technology, life sciences, and telecommunications enterprises. The company has attracted $30 million in backing from top-tier investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and ComVentures. For more information, go to www.monosphere.com.

*Source: Horison Information Strategies, 2005

For more information:
Frank Kettenstock
650-595-3102
frank@monosphere.com