Company Backgrounder

With fifteen years of design expertise in Serial ATA (SATA) and Parallel ATA (PATA) storage solutions, Promise Technology, Inc. is recognized as the global leader in ATA interface products and the creator of ATA RAID. From the newest Serial ATA to legacy Parallel ATA solutions, Promise maintains strong market leadership with wide range of value-driven storage product offerings for Entry-level to Mid-range Enterprise, PC Workstations and desktop PCs.

Promise designs, develops, manufactures and markets a comprehensive line of Serial ATA / Parallel ATA solutions including SAN (Storage Area Networks) and DAS (Direct Attach Storage) storage enclosure systems that hold terabytes of data with multiple hard disk drives with advanced data protection and management functionalities, host bus RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disk Drives) and ATA interface adapters that plug into internal computer expansion slots, and ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) that are integrated onto computer motherboards.

With such a wide variety of products, Promise has become the "King of ATA" with solutions for home users to corporate-user mission-critical applications that require terabytes of data.

The ATA storage interface started out humbly as the adequate-performance, basic storage interface for single-user, desktop personal computers. Today, with the leadership and the tremendous effort provided by Promise Technology, Inc., ATA disk interface solutions-such as ATA RAID-are used in systems ranging from large, enterprise-class storage to desktop PCs and many portable devices. As the market has grown, Promise solutions have played a key role in supercharging ATA and driving the success of ATA RAID and the ATA interface.

From the introduction of the first ATA RAID controller through to today's advanced solutions, Promise has lead the ATA RAID market in product units shipped with huge market share year after year. According to Gartner Dataquest, Promise continues to dominate the ATA RAID segment with an 83 percent market share in IA (Intel Architecture) file servers. In 2002 Promise ATA RAID host bus adapters for servers outsold every other manufacturers' host bus adapters based on every other storage interface including SCSI and Fibre Channel.

As the pioneer in ATA RAID technologies, Promise Technology addressed a unique niche, making RAID available to industries where traditional SCSI RAID systems were too expensive to warrant use. As the ATA niche has become mainstream and technology such as Serial ATA has advanced the performance of the interface, Promise products now reach deeper into storage mass markets that cater to mid-range enterprise, SOHO and professional computer users with viable, low-cost exceptionally robust storage solutions for data protection and improved performance.

Promise's longevity and core competency in ATA - from the ASIC, firmware, and software through advanced enclosure systems - affords Promise a great advantage over SCSI RAID companies that never made ATA the central focus of their company or product development plans. Since its founding in 1988, Promise has the distinction of creating more ground-breaking "firsts" in EIDE/ATA controller technology than any other firm worldwide. Within two years of entering the controller market, Promise Technology introduced the world's first IDE cache controller, and the first EIDE chipset. Other major first-to-market products include controllers for ATA/33, ATA/66, ATA/100, ATA/133, SATA, ATA RAID 0/1, ATA RAID 5, and the ATA RAID drive hotswap chassis.

The Company's market leading position is also reflected through its list of top-tier customers and its track record of products installed. Promise products have been specifically tested and chosen for system integration by the world's leading OEMs including Dell, Fujitsu Siemens ; Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Intel, Maxtor, Micron, NEC, Western Digital, ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and Apple, to name just a few. As a measure of this success, between mid 1999 and end of 2002, Promise shipped over 10 million ATA interface solution units to the market.

Promise Taiwan became a publicly traded company listed in the Taiwan stock market (Promise Technology, Inc (3057.TW)) with its Initial Public Offering in 2002. Promise employs over 300 people worldwide, with sales and marketing offices in USA, Taiwan, Europe and China; ISO 9001 certified high quality R&D centers in USA and Taiwan. With engineering that accounts for 45% of the employee head count, Promise remains dedicated to the research and development of storage solutions that leverage each new generation of ATA technology and continue to advance the ATA interface.