SANTA ANA, Calif., Oct. 16, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- SimpleTech, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEC), today announced the acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Gnutek Ltd., a privately-held company based in the United Kingdom, in an all-cash transaction. Gnutek is a technology innovator in the design and development of high performance NAND Flash-based solid state drives (SSD). Financial terms of the transaction are not disclosed.
Gnutek's products and intellectual property will enable SimpleTech to immediately address the Enterprise Storage market's rapidly increasing need for Flash-based drive solutions. In addition to being able to serve a wide range of industrial and military applications with existing products, SimpleTech can now provide its solutions to additional high-performance market sectors, where accelerated throughput is vital.
Gnutek's products offer sustained random I/O operations in excess of 50,000 per second and sustained throughput of 200 MB/sec. With random I/O performance over 200 times faster than standard hard disk drives, Gnutek's advanced SSD design accelerates the transfer of data for I/O intensive applications such as file servers, database systems, online transaction processing systems, media servers, simulators and web search engine caches.
"Gnutek has amassed impressive design and development engineering capabilities, leveraging many years of experience in the storage industry," said Manouch Moshayedi, chairman and chief executive officer at SimpleTech. "The Gnutek product feature set greatly accelerates our entry into large and developing markets for Flash and significantly expands our capabilities to service an even wider array of customers with our SSD products."
The acquisition confirms SimpleTech's continued commitment to the OEM Flash market through strategic investments. SimpleTech has already established its leadership in the nascent SSD market and intends to continue to extend its position in this marketplace through selective, targeted investments.
In addition to providing sales and marketing resources to the existing Gnutek team, SimpleTech plans to integrate Gnutek's capabilities into its existing SSD engineering and product development functions. SimpleTech expects this acquisition will result in a significant expansion of its existing SSD product line, already among the most comprehensive high performance SSD offerings available in the marketplace.
About Gnutek Ltd.
As a privately-held company based in the United Kingdom, Gnutek Ltd. is a technology innovator in the NAND Flash solid state drive market. Gnutek develops high performance solid state drive solutions to satisfy the ever increasing performance demands being placed on disk systems. Gnutek's products are designed to deliver outstanding performance combined with high reliability.
About SimpleTech, Inc. (Nasdaq:STEC)
SimpleTech, Inc. designs, develops, manufactures and markets custom and open-standard memory solutions based on Flash memory and DRAM technologies, and external storage solutions. Headquartered in Santa Ana, California, the company specializes in developing high-density DRAM memory modules and high-speed, high-capacity solid-state Flash drives and memory cards used in sensitive and highly-volatile environments. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.simpletech.com
The SimpleTech logo is available at http://www.primezone.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=1079
Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995
This release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, statements concerning our ability to immediately address the Enterprise Storage market's need for Flash-based drive solutions, our ability to provide solutions to additional high-performance market sectors, the Gnutek product feature set greatly increasing our entry into large and developing markets for Flash and significantly expanding our capabilities to service an even wider array of customers, our intention to extend our position in the SSD marketplace through selective, targeted investments, our integration plans for the acquired Gnutek assets, and our expectation that the acquisition will result in significant expansion of our SSD product line. 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 which could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements are detailed under "Risk Factors" in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission made from time to time by SimpleTech, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and its current reports on Form 8-K. In addition, other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements in connection with our acquisition of Gnutek include, but are not limited to, the risks inherent in acquisitions of technologies and businesses, including the timing and successful completion of technology and product development through volume production, integration issues, costs and unanticipated expenditures, Gnutek's products may not perform in the manner anticipated, customer demand for such products may not grow as projected, changing relationships with customers, suppliers and strategic partners, potential contractual, intellectual property or employment issues, charges or assumed liabilities that may result from the acquisition of the Gnutek assets, and the risk that anticipated benefits of the acquisition are not realized. The information contained in this press release is a statement of SimpleTech's present intention, belief or expectation. SimpleTech may change its intention, belief or expectation, at any time and without notice, based upon any changes in such factors, in SimpleTech's assumptions or otherwise. SimpleTech 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.