ENTERTAINMENT

During the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, an estimated 200 million Americans will watch NBC's coverage, featuring graphics and video stored on BlueArc SiliconServers. BlueArc's systems are providing NBC Olympics with high-performance, scalable storage, serving data quickly and seamlessly to hundreds of clients that require simultaneous access to content for on-air transmission. BlueArc SiliconServers function as a virtual "post office" offering graphical and video elements for live broadcast from Athens. The systems store multiple terabytes of graphical data, including audio files, movies, and digitized clips, distributing the data to clients while maintaining data integrity, ensuring anytime access and maintaining performance under peak loads. By the conclusion of the 2004 Olympic Games, NBC and its network partners, including Bravo, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo and the USA Network, will have carried more than 1,200 hours of coverage -- nearly three times the television hours provided at the Olympic Games in Sydney. In preparation for this unprecedented amount of on-air broadcast time, NBC Olympics selected BlueArc in early 2003. For the last 16 months, artists in NBC Olympics' New York headquarters have been creating, rendering and storing images and video using BlueArc SiliconServers. This summer, the systems were packed up and shipped to Athens ready for the Games to begin. "Immediate access to graphics and video is a critical element for NBC's Olympic broadcasts to be considered an engineering success," said Phil Paully, director of graphics engineering and operations for NBC Olympics. "BlueArc storage has become an essential part of efficient and organized file and image distribution for NBC's Olympic graphic coverage and allows us to create an unparalleled viewing experience of the Games." "BlueArc is pleased to play an integral role in NBC's Olympic coverage in Athens," said Mike Gustafson, president of BlueArc. "NBC Olympics, like many of our customers who focus on real-time access to digital assets, realizes the benefits of BlueArc's unique architecture, which delivers dramatic cost savings and business advantage by accelerating customer processes through high performance and scalability." BlueArc SiliconServers are backed by a unique architecture that allows customers to scale their storage systems in performance and capacity far beyond any other servers available on the market today. The architecture adapts to changing application or capacity needs, simplifying management, accelerating productivity and protecting a customer's long-term investment. BlueArc® Corporation changes the economics of network storage by helping customers manage more information with less effort. BlueArc's SiliconServer storage systems enable organizations to maximize performance and reduce operating costs through the movement of software functions into programmable hardware. Since 1998, BlueArc has provided scalable and reliable products, services and solutions to help enterprises achieve unmatched productivity and profitability from their data. The company's headquarters are in San Jose, California with UK operations based in Bracknell, England. More information on BlueArc is available on the Internet at www.bluearc.com.