FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.--July 28, 2003-- DataCore Software today announced that Banta Book Group, a division of Menasha, Wis.-based Banta Corporation, worked with Carrollton, Texas-based integrator Proactive Technologies to implement a storage area network (SAN) managed by DataCore's enterprise-class SANsymphony software. The solution reflects the significant value that a software-based approach delivers to communications companies, such as printing and prepress companies, video production houses and graphics agencies that store and manage ultra-large files as part of their everyday workload. Like many of these companies, Banta, the seventh-largest printer in North America, required high-performance and reliability to keep presses running 24x7 and avoid thousands of dollars lost per hour of downtime. The prepress division of Banta Book Group processes enormous, multi-gigabyte digital files for printing educational and general books, calendars and B-to-B catalogues. Banta's prepress production manager, Tom Clifford, needed a storage management solution that could keep pace with his division's need to access, move and archive high volumes of data. Clifford turned to Proactive to create a turnkey solution that could consolidate a range of storage resources to centrally support Banta's mission-critical operations: Ten Web-fed and two sheet-fed presses and servers running on MacOS, Windows NT and 2000 and Unix platforms. Proactive recommended and delivered a solution, based on DataCore's SANsymphony storage management platform that was easy for Banta to roll out and manage on its own using existing skill sets. "By managing storage at the network level, we've eliminated a lot of the headaches associated with individual device administration and performance bottlenecks," said Clifford. "DataCore and Proactive have ensured that we get what we need, when we need it." SANsymphony automates previously time-consuming and risky storage management tasks, dramatically boosting the productivity of staff, applications, presses and other valuable assets. The software delivers rapid ROI by accelerating system performance by as much as 300 percent, eliminating costly storage-related downtime, doubling utilization of existing storage capacity, ending vendor "lock-in" of proprietary hardware and making disaster recovery affordable. SANsymphony's familiar Windows look-and-feel allowed Banta's technicians to immediately deploy a consolidated SAN and maximize the benefits of centralized administration. "IT directors across the printing industry are struggling to keep production systems running 24x7, speed access to multi-gigabyte graphics files and extend the life of existing IT investments - bottom-line goals for any organization today," said Ken Horner, DataCore's vice president of marketing. "Better, easier data storage management with SANsymphony makes them achievable and affordable."