Dot Hill Celebrates 30 Years of Storage Innovation With 100th U.S. Patent

LONGMONT, Colo., Jan. 8, 2015 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In its 30^th year of delivering storage innovations through OEMs and channel partners, Dot Hill Systems Corp. (Nasdaq:HILL), a trusted supplier of innovative enterprise-class storage systems, announced it has secured its 100^th U.S. patent. Dot Hill's patent portfolio includes game changers such as EcoStor™ for battery-less cache backup, SimulCache^TM for fast dual controller write operations, and RealTier^TM software for autonomic real-time tiering.

According to the ipCapital Group, in 2012 Dot Hill ranked first among companies for having the greatest number of U.S. patents per $100 million in storage revenue. In 2013, Dot Hill was also ranked first among its peers by MDB Capital Group in terms of "Patent Portfolio Tech Score" and "Companies with Inbound Citations." Eighty-four of Dot Hill's one-hundred patents cover the company's RAID controller and SAN-related technology, including RealTier™, its autonomic real-time tiering software. In addition to the 100 patents the company has secured, Dot Hill has 19 additional U.S. patent applications pending approval.

"This 100-patent milestone represents an extensive 30-year legacy of innovation from Dot Hill's research and development and engineering talent," said Dana Kammersgard, president and chief executive officer, Dot Hill. "Dot Hill's patented technologies translate into product differentiation in the form of ground breaking new features, industry leading performance, rock solid reliability and lower total cost of ownership."

Originally co-founded as Artecon by Kammersgard in 1984, Dot Hill has delivered a range of innovations over the last 30 years, including:

• 1997 – First thin provisioning drivers
• 1999 – First 1Gb Fibre Channel JBOD chassis
• 2002 – First 2u12 chassis with 3.5-inch drives and integrated controllers
• 2004 – First external storage system to use the SAS disk interface
• 2006 – First SAS/SATA external storage system device support
• 2010 – First hybrid Fibre Channel/iSCSI arrays
• 2010 – First 8Gb Fibre Channel array
• 2012 – First real-time tiering storage solution
• 2013 – First 16Gb Fibre Channel/10Gb iSCSI converged interface storage solutions
• 2014 – First ultra-density storage system with 48 drives in a 2u form factor
• 2014 – First NEBS Level 3 compliant high-density large form factor 56-drive array

For a comprehensive list of Dot Hill milestones the past 30 years, view the Dot Hill innovation infographic.

"You can't prosper in the storage industry for 30 years by just throwing 'me-too' products into the marketplace and hoping customers will adopt them," said Ken Day, chief technology officer, Dot Hill. "At Dot Hill, customer input is the foundation of our design process. The challenges that they face on a daily basis are top-of-mind when we develop patented technologies for our storage solutions."

Dot Hill's 100^th US patent, numbered 8,869,131, describes a software management innovation that allows a storage controller to be easily and safely downgraded to a previous version of firmware. This can be useful for testing purposes or if the newer firmware has encountered unexpected issues. The invention includes safeguards that prevent a controller from becoming completely inoperative if a code downgrade is attempted while a feature not in the older version is in use.

Dot Hill's patent portfolio builds on the extensive intellectual property behind Dot Hill AssuredSAN and AssuredSAN Pro solutions, which deliver rock-solid, wicked-fast solutions to customers and OEM partners. Dot Hill's continuous innovation benefits the company's key vertical market customers in the Media & Entertainment, Telecommunications, Oil & Gas, Big Data & Analytics and Digital Imaging sectors, that require high-performing storage to support demanding applications.

About Dot Hill

Leveraging its proprietary Assured family of storage solutions, Dot Hill solves many of today's most challenging storage problems – helping IT to improve performance, increase availability, simplify operations, and reduce costs. Dot Hill's solutions combine breakthrough software with the industry's most flexible and extensive hardware platform and automated management to deliver best-in-class solutions. Headquartered in Longmont, Colo., Dot Hill has offices and/or representatives in China, Germany, India, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

For more information, visit us at www.dothill.com.

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Statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ from those expressed or implied by the statements. For a discussion of risks and uncertainties that Dot Hill may face, please consult the Forms 10-K and 10-Q most recently filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission by Dot Hill. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date they were made and Dot Hill undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect changes in circumstances and Dot Hill is not responsible for statements made by third parties, such as ipCapital Group and MDB Capital Group.