Marathon Technologies Launches Their Next Generation Application Availability Software Solution Built on Patented Virtualization Technology

LITTLETON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 17, 2006--
EverRun(TM) HA Moves Beyond Traditional Availability Solutions; Enables Marathon to Serve Broader Application Availability Market

Marathon Technologies Corporation, the leading provider of high availability software for Microsoft(R) Windows(R) environments, today announced EverRun HA, its next generation application availability product. With its patented virtualization architecture providing tremendous advantages over traditional high availability solutions like clustering, EverRun HA dramatically expands Marathon's appeal where the complexity of clusters won't suffice, and where failure is never an option.

EverRun HA is based upon the same market proven technology successfully employed in Marathon's flagship, lock-stepped continuous availability solution, EverRun FT, previously named FTvirtual Server. EverRun HA adopts many of the key attributes of the flagship product, but provides for a broader class of application availability with greater scalability, multi-socket and multi-core CPU support.

Unique Availability Architecture

EverRun HA unites a pair of industry standard x86 servers to eliminate single points of failure but shields the application and redundant platform through a patented virtualization layer. The company's software creates a virtual Windows server environment where the application is installed, operated and managed. The entire configuration presents itself as a single standalone server, with just one identity and IP address.

EverRun HA was intentionally designed to provide a simpler, more reliable availability solution than the most widely used option in the marketplace today - clustering. Turnkey, automated, simplicity are the cornerstones of EverRun HA, which uses embedded intelligent policy management to resolve faults & failures. The primary benefit to the end user is that applications continue to ComputeThru(R) platform faults & failures, without needing to modify or script the application. The protected application runs on one server at a time, utilizing the redundant hardware in the second server in the event of a device failure, preventing costly downtime. In typical clustering solutions these failures would cause a failover and a restart of the application.

For planned maintenance operations, EverRun HA allows online migration of applications from the active server to the secondary server with no interruptions or loss of application state, enabling maintenance to be performed at any time without impacting clients.

"In today's environment, availability is becoming a strategic competitive weapon. Companies must think beyond what they already know and consider new ways to ensure that their critical business process applications are always up and running," said William Hurley, senior analyst at leading research firm Data Mobility Group. "Cost effective elimination of downtime is of utmost importance to companies in all industries. Marathon's EverRun HA can help companies achieve and maintain the highest levels of application availability simply, transparently and affordably."

Additional Benefits

-- Highest Levels of Availability - EverRun HA is designed to provide higher levels of availability than existing solutions with no loss of data.

-- Simple to Configure, Install and Update - EverRun HA runs on standard Intel servers, requiring only basic internal storage and standard Ethernet network connections. Application software is installed only once and no failover scripting is required.

-- Runs Any Application - EverRun HA supports any Windows application without requiring them to be 'cluster aware', and without any custom coding or scripting needed.

-- Recovery From IO Device Failures, Without Failover - EverRun HA can transparently utilize IO devices within the secondary node to eliminate an entire class of failovers and masking failures from the application.

-- Integrated Remote Availability Protection - Marathon's SplitSite(R) option for EverRun HA extends the level of availability protection by enabling the primary and secondary servers to be geographically separated while still maintaining full data and application protection.

-- Lower Hardware Costs - EverRun HA does not require a shared-disk subsystem or SAN. EverRun HA supports direct-attached, SAN and NAS storage allowing flexibility in choosing the right solution.

-- Reduced Application License Costs - EverRun HA requires only a single application license and does not require the more expensive enterprise versions.

-- Eliminates Downtime for Planned Operations - Using EverRun HA, applications can be migrated online without any downtime or loss of application state.

"We are proud to launch EverRun HA, a product designed to meet our customer's needs for a highly scalable, turnkey availability solution that protects the complete system; data, network and application," said Gary R. Phillips, president and CEO of Marathon. "We offer customers an architecturally different approach to achieving application availability, enabling the highest level of availability in a simple, low cost solution. Traditional high availability solutions have been complex to set up and resource intensive to manage. With EverRun HA we make availability simple, affordable and accessible to a much broader market."

About Marathon Technologies:

Marathon Technologies Corporation defines what's next after clusters -- Infinite Availability(TM). Moving beyond traditional high availability, Marathon sets a new standard for application availability using its patented virtualization technology that embraces off-the-shelf servers, Windows and business process applications. Marathon's EverRun(TM) product family delivers a completely automatic path to application availability, liberating busy IT professionals from unnecessary complexity. Marathon is a privately held, venture-backed corporation based in Littleton, Massachusetts, USA, with offices worldwide. For more information please visit www.marathontechnologies.com or call 978-489-1100 or 888-682-1142.