Solarflare announces integration and distribution partnership
with leading European distributor Hammer

Leader in application-intelligent 10GbE software and hardware partners
with leading distributor to serve enterprises throughout Europe

IRVINE, CA—April 3, 2012—Solarflare, the leader in application-intelligent 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking software and hardware, today announced an integration and distribution partnership with leading European distributor Hammer to deliver the complete portfolio and fully-integrated solutions that will address enterprises' growing workloads and network demands.

Hammer is one of the longest-standing specialist storage distributors in Europe and provides a complete end-to-end storage offering to its customers. Hammer sells throughout Europe via its UK headquarters and European subsidiaries.

Designed to support high-performance, low-latency, cut-through application performance, Solarflare's 10GbE server adapters dramatically improve network I/O performance. Their industry-leading networking hardware and software provides a flexible and direct model for accelerating applications, while maintaining support for network and operating system functions. Its new family of 10GbE mezzanine adapters reduces complexity and increases performance of high-density blade server environments. The company's updated OpenOnload® middleware is specifically designed for high-performance networks and bypasses the OS kernel, enabling applications to increase their network load, thereby increasing performance and lowering application latency.

"The availability of high-performance servers, low-latency 10GbE switches and scale-out storage are driving the trend toward the adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet in high performance computing, big data, virtualization and other demanding, scale-out compute applications," said Peter Jones, Managing Director of International Sales and Channels, Solarflare. "Solarflare's 10GbE software and hardware solutions are uniquely designed to handle the server I/O network requirements scale-out compute apps such as big data and unlock the power of multi-socket, multi-core servers. Our partnership with Hammer is a significant milestone because it further deepens Solarflare's presence throughout Europe, which represents a very important market for the company."

Gerard Marlow, General Manager for Business Development at Hammer, said: "We are very proud to be partnering with Solarflare. They are renowned for having the industry's best performing low-latency 10GbE server networking solutions, which, with Hammer’s range of Intel and Supermicro-based bespoke whitebox storage server solutions, will further enhance our ability to offer leading edge technology solutions into a wide range of applications and industries, including high performance computing (HPC), cloud computing, storage and virtualized data centers; and financial services sectors, including high frequency trading."

"Hammer's unrivalled data storage server expertise, combined with Solarflare's UK-based R&D resource, can offer customers pre-sales design consultancy to ensure a true bespoke solution for their particular application and environment, ensuring an immediate return on investment (ROI). We look forward to working together to add value to customers in this market space."

About Solarflare

Solarflare is the leading provider of application-intelligent networking I/O products that bridge the gap between applications and the network, delivering improved performance, increased scalability, and higher return on investment. The company's solutions are widely used in scale-out server environments such as high frequency trading, high performance computing, cloud, virtualization and big data. Solarflare's products are available from leading distributors and value-added resellers, as well as from Dell, IBM, and HP. Solarflare is headquartered in Irvine, California and operates an R&D facility in Cambridge, UK.

About Hammer

Hammer is a leading specialist storage distributor. Its success is based on a total commitment to storage, combined with unrivalled technical knowledge and customer service quality in providing data storage for any storage requirement. Recognized for its commitment to innovation, Hammer works closely with selected world-class vendors and market-leading resellers and integrators. It also develops and provides flexible and bespoke storage solutions for all markets. Founded in 1991 and a privately owned company, Hammer has its headquarters in Basingstoke, England, with a staff of 120+, and has increasing European presence with offices in the Nordics, Italy, Netherlands, and Belgium. For more information, visit www.hammerplc.com.

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