NEW YORK, Feb. 2 -- In a move to bring new digital solutions to customers, Kodak Polychrome Graphics (KPG) has announced an agreement with Exanet, a developer of digital storage system solutions, to distribute ExaStore the company's Scalable Storage Cluster System in the European graphic arts market. The agreement is an extension of the agreement already in place in North America. ExaStore is optimized for medium-sized commercial printers with prepress facilities, large commercial printers with or without prepress facilities, prepress houses, publishing houses and large advertising agencies and provides ease of access to their files. It is an off-the-shelf, industry-standard hardware solution that allows users to consolidate disparate storage solutions. ExaStore substantially lowers the cost of entry to storage systems and protects the customer's investment by not requiring proprietary hardware. It also comes with a simple upgrade option allowing the storage solution to grow with the customer's business. Michael Chazot, Vice President of European Sales for Exanet's Digital Media Division, observes, "Exanet's introduction of the first digital storage solution tailored for the graphic arts industry has already proven to serve a very significant market need. Partnering with KPG in Europe will empower the publishing industry to take advantage of the cost and performance benefits provided by Exanet's and KPG's innovative technology solutions." Says Gerard Cardinet, Vice President Europe and New Business Development: "Storage has become a big issue for our customers as they migrate to digital businesses. To address this customer need, KPG is working with Exanet to make ExaStore available to print and publishing industries. We believe it to be the best solution on the market." ExaStore provides easy file-sharing for digital applications across a wide range of platforms, including Apple, Windows, UNIX and Linux. Exanet's architecture allows customers to grow their systems using building-block modules that add capacity or performance independently thus starting with a small low-cost system and growing it according to business requirements but without disruption to their operating environment. Concludes Gerard Cardinet: "The market and product expertise of the KPG teams and our understanding of customer challenges mean we are ideally positioned to assist our customers in managing the transition to this 'next generation' storage system. As part of our launch program, we plan to hold an European road show in March 2004 and ExaStore will feature in the commercial sector of our stand at Drupa."