SanDisk and Red Hat Form Strategic Alliance to Deliver High-Performance Flash-based Ceph Storage Solutions

Dubai, UAE, April 5, 2016 — /EPR NETWORK/ — Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, and SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a global leader in flash storage solutions, today announced a strategic alliance aimed at bringing combined benefits of Ceph and flash storage to enterprise customers. SanDisk’s award winning InfiniFlashTM flash storage system, paired with Red Hat Ceph Storage, offers world-class performance and efficient data management that can significantly reduce operational and capital expenditures.

As part of the alliance, Red Hat Ceph Storage will be offered as the preferred Ceph solution for the latest SanDisk InfiniFlash storage system from SanDisk. The combination of open, software-defined storage from Red Hat and flash storage from SanDisk enables companies to serve a broad set of workloads with more tightly integrated, high-performing storage that scales.

Red Hat Ceph Storage is an open, massively scalable, software-defined storage solution. It is widely used in the OpenStack community, offering a single efficient platform to support the demanding storage needs of cloud architectures.

SanDisk’s InfiniFlash system offers the performance of an all-flash array with the economics of a hard disk drive (HDD)-based system, addressing the needs of medium to large deployments. Combined with Red Hat Ceph Storage, it offers petabyte-scale capacity, high density and peak performance to lower the cost of storage, especially for organizations struggling to manage exponential data growth.

“We are proud to work with SanDisk on this solution. Our alliance aims to deliver the power of scale and performance of flash technology as never before, and we believe it has the potential to disrupt today’s traditional, proprietary storage market,” says Ranga Rangachari, vice president and general manager, Storage, Red Hat. “Our customers now have an expanded portfolio of best-of-breed platforms, as SanDisk’s InfiniFlash System and Red Hat Ceph Storage have been tested, optimized, and certified together for optimal stability and performance.”

“At SanDisk, we strongly believe that open source drives innovation in the technology industry. We are excited about partnering with Red Hat as it further builds on our continued commitment to the open source community across mobile, cloud, and enterprise deployments,” says Ravi Swaminathan, vice president and general manager, Systems and Software Solutions, SanDisk. “Combining SanDisk’s flash optimization and product-specific innovations with the leading stacks and standards of open source software like Red Hat Ceph Storage enables InfiniFlash to deliver breakthrough scale, performance and agility for Hyperscale and large-scale OpenStack environments.”

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage, and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As a connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

About SanDisk
SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, is a global leader in flash storage solutions. For more than 27 years, SanDisk has expanded the possibilities of storage, providing trusted and innovative products that have transformed the electronics industry. Today, SanDisk’s quality, state-of-the-art solutions are at the heart of many of the world’s largest data centers, and embedded in advanced smartphones, tablets and PCs. SanDisk’s consumer products are available at hundreds of thousands of retail stores worldwide. For more information, visit www.sandisk.com.

InfiniFlash is part of SanDisk’s systems and software solutions portfolio, which enables the flash-transformed data center through integrated, tested and supported flash solution building blocks for today’s enterprise and cloud workloads, including virtualization, tier-1 databases, Big Data Analytics and Digital Media Repositories, for an experience never before thought possible with extreme performance, massive capacity and immediate access to information.

SanDisk’s Forward-Looking Statements
This news release contains certain forward-looking statements, including statements about the continued collaboration between SanDisk and Red Hat to work together on all-flash storage solutions for enterprise, and the functionalities, performance and cost advantages of all-flash storage systems. There are a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause these forward-looking statements to be inaccurate including, among others: the failure of all-flash storage systems to achieve the various functionality, performance and cost benefits currently anticipated; potential delays in product development or lack of customer acceptance of SanDisk’s all-flash storage systems; failure to manage and continue the relationship with Red Hat, general business and economic conditions; weakness in demand in all-flash storage systems; industry and technology trends not occurring in the timeline SanDisk anticipates or at all; and the other risks detailed from time-to-time in SanDisk’s Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports, including, but not limited to, its annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2016. All statements made in this news release are made only as of the date of this release. SanDisk undertakes no obligations to update the information in this release in the event facts or circumstances change after the date of this release.

Red Hat’s Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to the ability of Red Hat to compete effectively; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the inability to adequately protect Red Hat intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, Red Hat’s growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in Red Hat’s most recent SEC filings (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website at http://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”. In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent Red Hat’s views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while Red Hat may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Red Hat specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Red Hat’s views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

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Red Hat is a trademark or registered trademark of of Red Hat, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. SanDisk is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the U.S. and other countries. InfiniFlash is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation. The OpenStack mark is either a registered trademark/service mark or trademark/service mark of the OpenStack Foundation, in the United States and other countries, and is used with the OpenStack Foundation’s permission. Red Hat is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by the OpenStack Foundation, or the OpenStack community.
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