First American Bank Centralizes Information on EMC CLARiiON Networked Storage to Boost Operational Efficiency

Hopkinton, - December 18, 2002 -

EMC Corporation announced today that First American Bank, a full-service Chicago-area bank with $1.8 billion in assets, is standardizing on EMC CLARiiON networked storage and software to simplify management and boost protection of its rapidly growing information assets. First American Bank selected EMC over HP/Compaq EVA and Hitachi 9200 systems because of EMC CLARiiON's superior networked storage capabilities and ease of management.

Noel Levasseur, First American Bank's Executive Vice President, said, "A major challenge is growing our IT infrastructure as we network more of our banking functions and handle increasing amounts of information. Compared with other vendors, EMC demonstrated the most technical competence in networked storage, the richest software set, the strongest pipeline for future functionality and a clear path to high-end solutions if and when our needs expand."

Based in Elk Grove Village, Ill., First American Bank relies on its CLARiiON storage area network (SAN) to provide consolidated storage to Windows NT-based servers from HP/Compaq, Sun Solaris and Novell Netware servers. The SAN powers the bank's critical applications, including check imaging, financials, Oracle, SQL Server, Citrix network access, file/print, test and development. As a regional bank, First American Bank has very targeted requirements for price, performance and storage capacity. EMC's mid-tier CLARiiON solution meets the bank's storage requirements and provides the flexibility to adapt and grow its networked storage infrastructure as necessary with ease and efficiency.

Consolidating First American Bank's branch-based storage onto CLARiiON helped First American Bank reduce file/print servers from 34 to eight and generate a 50 percent return on investment. The bank's storage capacity has grown to six terabytes, but its storage administration staff has remained the same. With CLARiiON, First American Bank has a clearer view of its storage resources and the ability to move information around more easily and efficiently.

EMC Open Software

With CLARiiON, First American Bank purchased a full range of EMC SAN management and business continuity software, including EMC SnapView, EMC MirrorView, EMC Access Logix, EMC Navisphere, and EMC PowerPath. First American is implementing EMC MirrorView software to provide remote mirroring of its critical information across two data centers located 35 miles apart. EMC Global Services is providing design and implementation services for the bank's CLARiiON SAN and business continuity infrastructure.

"As more of our customer-facing systems go online, we have become increasingly dependent on highly available storage to keep our business up and running," said Levasseur. "If our information was not available, it would be impossible to revert to manual operations. EMC was the only vendor able to demonstrate the ability to replicate data across long distances; HP/Compaq and HDS never gave us that confidence. EMC's MirrorView software will allow us to recover from a major downtime event in hours versus days. We're also well positioned to stay in front of coming regulations as the federal government is establishing industry guidelines for business recovery."

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world leader in information storage systems, software, networks and services. Dedicating itself one hundred percent to automated networked storage solutions, EMC helps organizations of all sizes across the globe to better and more cost-effectively manage, protect and share their information. Details about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.