Astute Named Finalist for Red Herring North America Top 100 Awards

Astute NetworksTM, Inc., the leading provider of performance storage appliances, today announced that the company has made the Red Herring North America Top 100 Awards as a finalist for its ViSX solid state flash storage solution. Astute was selected from a pool of hundreds of candidates across North America and was selected based on the company's addressable market size, its IP and patents, its financing, the proof of concept, management strength, market size, investor record, customer acquisition and financial health.

A key criterion for the Red Herring Top 100 is technological innovation. Astute’s patented, ViSX Performance Storage Appliances break application performance barriers by resolving critical I/O bottlenecks In virtual server and virtual desktop infrastructures. Based on its 10GbE DataPump Engine™ and Networked Flash™ architecture, ViSX gives IT managers a simple to deploy storage I/O acceleration appliance that boosts application and VDI performance up to 10X in a matter of minutes. Companies improve user productivity, customer satisfaction and revenue generation while eliminating the over-provisioning of storage, servers, and network resources. ViSX co-exists with installed storage and delivers 100% flash performance in a non-disruptive, simple to deploy solution, at prices comparable to disk-based systems.

Red Herring has been selecting the most exciting and promising start-ups and "scale ups" since 1995.

This unique assessment of potential is complemented by a review of the company's actual track record and standing, which allows Red Herring to see past the "buzz" and make the list a valuable instrument for discovering and advocating the greatest business opportunities in the industry. 2013 will be remembered as a special vintage.

"The finalists list confirms the excellent choices made by entrepreneurs and VCs and the start-ups' solid roots, embracing their innovations. By all metrics, it emphasizes entrepreneurial excellence," said Alex Vieux, publisher and CEO of Red Herring.

“It’s an honor to be named a finalist by Red Herring for the Americas Top 100 Award,” said Bob MacKnight, CEO, Astute Networks. “The storage industry is going through massive change right now as users are migrating away from traditional disk-based storage and increasingly turning to solid state flash-based appliances for their business-critical applications. Our ViSX performance storage appliance is a game changing solution for mid-sized companies as it outperforms all other competitive alternatives at price points that are comparable to disk-based storage. We are perfectly positioned to capitalize on this multi-billion dollar market opportunity as we address the next stage of rapid growth for the company.”

Award finalists will present their winning strategies at the Red Herring North America Forum in Monterey, Calif., May 21-23 where the Top 100 winners will be announced at a special awards ceremony the evening of May 23. The event provides a rare opportunity to meet the founders, investors, and top executives of these disruptive companies all under one roof. The forum will explore the market's appreciation of innovation as a fast-track to success, and how firms from the Americas are leading the charge in many tech sectors. It will discuss the drivers for successful entrepreneurship, and will demonstrate how innovation is creating business opportunities for challengers and incumbents alike.

About Astute Networks
Astute is the leading provider of performance storage appliances for physical and virtual environments that increase performance, enhance user productivity, and lower IT costs. The company’s ViSX family of Networked Flash appliances is based on a 100% solid state Flash technology that cost–effectively delivers a high number of sustained IOPS to dramatically increase application performance. Powered by its patented DataPump Engine™, ViSX overcomes performance limitations by non-disruptively delivering shared performance to all servers and virtual machines over pervasively deployed Ethernet networks. ViSX is available through the company’s network of authorized AstuteNet channel partners. For more information, visit www.astutenetworks.com.

Astute Networks, Networked flash, ViSX, DataPump Engine, and FlashWRX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Astute Networks, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.