StorageTek - high value European R&D Unit for Dublin

StorageTek - high value European R&D Unit for Dublin

Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment Mary Harney T.D., confirmed today (Thursday 12^th February 2004) that StorageTek Ireland Limited has finalised its discussions withIDA Ireland to locate a StorageTek® European R&D Unit at its offices in Blackrock, Co. Dublin. StorageTek, of the US, is a $2 billion worldwide company that delivers a broad range of storage solutions to the Information Technology (IT) sector. The Irish Unit will be a key contributor to StorageTek's corporate R&D activities. StorageTek has been working with the Government and IDA Ireland since late 2002 to ensure that Ireland was the favoured location for the investment.

The Tánaiste said, "This strategic new investment is the result of joint representation by the Irish management team of StorageTek and IDA to StorageTek's Corporate headquarters where the benefits of establishing such a high-tech facility in Ireland were clearly demonstrated. These benefits are the availability of people with the necessary qualifications and skills and Ireland's successful track-record in supporting leading-edge R&D investments from global companies. This is exactly the type of facility and operation that we are seeking to attract to Ireland and are delighted that StorageTek has chosen Dublin as the home for this important investment."

Sean Jackman, Managing Director, StorageTek Ireland, said, "I am delighted that we will be cementing the success of the Irish subsidiary's fast growing Sales and Services businesses through the location of R&D activities in Dublin. The new Unit will develop products for data management in the Application Storage Management area of IT that will be sold through our worldwide organisation. It is testimony to the calibre of the work done by our highly skilled Irish workforce that we were successful in winning this investment. The activity in Ireland will commence with two researchers and this team will expand over time." StorageTek currently employs 12 people in Ireland.

"The Unit will be closely integrated with the R&D teams based across the world. R&D is critical to StorageTek's ongoing success and innovation, a total of $215 million was invested in R&D in 2002 alone. The new products will be aimed at managing data in a large corporate mainframe database environment, allowing comprehensive centralised data archival policies to be implemented with minimal impact on data access and distribution capabilities, initially using IBM's DB2 and OAM database software," added Mr. Jackman.

As major businesses and institutions increase the use of IT there has been a significant increase in the complexity of the systems used to manage the resultant huge quantity of data that has to be stored, managed, replicated, protected and integrated. The Irish R&D Unit will be responsible for developing new StorageTek products to capitalise on this growth.

About StorageTek :

StorageTek (NYSE:STK), a $2 billion worldwide company with headquarters in Louisville, Colorado, US, delivers a broad range of storage solutions that are easy to manage, integrate well with existing infrastructures and allow universal access to data across servers, media types and networks. StorageTek provides practical and safe storage solutions in disk, networking, services, tape and tape automation.

StorageTek's R&D expenditure for 2002 was $215 million, representing 10.5% of its annual sales. The Corporation presently holds approximately 500 US patents, about 60 of which were issued in 2002. StorageTek® is a registered trademark of Storage Technology Corp.

For more information www.storagetek.com, or call Cathy Toft on 00 353 1 20555 66.

ENDS/ETE1187