London, England, UK -- (ReleaseWire) -- 10/23/2006 --Zycko, a privately-held distributor of open-system storage architectures, today announced a new partnership with Diligent Technologies, a leading provider of data protection solutions. Zycko has joined Diligent’s channel partner network and will be selling and supporting Diligent’s ProtecTIER VT with HyperFactor(TM) and VTF Open data protection solutions to mid-range and enterprise customers across the EMEA and CIS regions.

• Diligent’s ProtecTIER™ VT with HyperFactor data de-duplication technology is a Data Protection Platform with a Virtual Tape Library (VTL) interface that scales up to 1 petabyte of physical disk storage, eliminating redundant data while maintaining 100 percent data integrity, reducing physical storage needs by up to 25 times or more.

• VTF Open data protection software for Open System environments, emulates the traditional role of a tape library, enabling existing backup applications to use disk, rather than tape. By utilising disk, customers achieve much greater data throughput performance; high availability data protection and rapid recoverability, without needing to change existing backup policies, practices or procedures.

Diligent’s data protection solutions work seamlessly with all major computer platforms, backup applications and operating systems. Customers benefit from unparalleled performance, scalability and data integrity; a reduction in the amount and cost of physical storage required, resulting in a lower total cost of ownership over traditional tape based systems.

Commenting on its use of Diligent’s solution Martin Bruce, Lead Storage Consultant at Friends Provident said: "We are exploiting Diligent’s Virtual Tape Library (VTL) technologies in order to greatly increase our back-up capacity and provide the back-end to a single, unified backup solution. We are currently rolling out the solution to protect around 50TB of production data after identifying the storage savings, made possible by the factoring capabilities of the ProtecTIER platform.”

“Our partnership with Zycko is an important addition to our ever increasing channel partner network across Europe. We selected Zycko because of its pedigree and breadth of experience as a distributor in the enterprise data storage market,” said Doron Kempel, Chairman & CEO Diligent Technologies. “We are confident that Zycko's coverage and intimate knowledge of end user needs in this region will allow us to strengthen our market position as a leading data protection solution provider in this space.”

“Diligent’s data protection solutions help mid-range and enterprise-level customers cut redundant data and improve efficiency,” says Nigel Lambert Channel Director, Zycko. “Zycko is committed to making storage simple and we are delighted to be partnering with Diligent to deliver this.”

About Diligent Technologies Corporation
Diligent delivers scalable, proven, enterprise-class disk-based data protection solutions. Diligent’s ProtecTIER™ platform, powered by HyperFactor™, a game-changing data de-duplication technology, enables customers to protect more data while recording less of it, all without disrupting existing policies, practices and procedures in their data center. Diligent’s solutions and professional services are available through its reseller and partner channels along with sales, service and R&D support located worldwide. Information on Diligent Technologies is available on the World Wide Web at www.diligent.com, tel: +1-508-663-1300 or e-mail: info@diligent.com.

About Zycko
Zycko is a master distributor of best-in-class IT infrastructure solutions - from convergent networks to open-system storage architectures - through a channel of resellers, systems integrators and service providers.

Zycko is privately held and has been profitable since inception in 2000, when the company’s original charter was to market data networking accessories to resellers as a wholesale distributor. Zycko now employs over 190 staff, serving over 3000 resellers around the world from six offices on three continents. The company enjoys an annual turnover of more than $120m.

Zycko’s strategic partner base includes world-class companies such as Agilent, Asigra, CommVault, Diligent, Edgewater, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Hitachi Data Systems, Huawei, Intransa, Isilon, MGE, ONStor, Polycom, Riverbed, StoreAge, QLogic.

For more information visit www.zycko.com

Note to Editors: Diligent, Diligent Technologies logo, VTF, ProtecTIER and HyperFactor are trademarks of Diligent Technologies Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.