SMART Storage Systems Established as Independent Entity Under the SMART Family of Global Companies

NEWARK, CA--(Marketwire - Feb 22, 2012) - SMART Worldwide Holdings today announced that it has completed the creation of its solid-state storage division into an independent entity named SMART Storage Systems. Led by a management team with more than 13 decades of combined experience in enterprise storage and flash technology, SMART Storage Systems is focused on capitalizing on the rapid solid-state drive (SSD) market growth. An innovative and rapidly emerging SSD technology provider, SMART Storage Systems has solved the enterprise quest for high-performance, high-endurance, cost-efficient storage and is delivering industry-leading SSD solutions to Tier-1 OEMs and organizations in the enterprise and defense sectors.

"The enterprise SSD market is poised for significant growth for the foreseeable future, as organizations begin to phase out traditional hard-drives in favor of higher performing solid-state storage," said Joseph Unsworth, Research Director at Gartner. "Knowledge of both the enterprise storage and flash technology markets, including the qualification process with Tier-1 storage OEMs, offers a unique position to capitalize on this growth, and speed up SSD penetration into enterprise organizations."

Taken private by Silver Lake Partners and Silver Lake Sumeru in August 2011, SMART Modular Technologies began investing in solid-state storage technology in 2008 as the company recognized the growth opportunities available by focusing on the storage industry and its associated markets. To facilitate future growth and address shifts in market trends more quickly, SMART Storage Systems has been structured as a standalone entity under SMART Worldwide Holdings. With this restructuring, SMART Storage Systems now maintains its own executive, engineering, sales and marketing teams, as well as a dedicated manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia. This allows the company to streamline operations, remain nimble to facilitate future innovation, and meet increasing customer demand.

"Organizations in nearly every market sector are finding that the need to access and process information is outpacing the performance capabilities in traditional hard-drive based server environments," said John Scaramuzzo, President of SMART Storage. "SMART Storage is not only focused on overcoming these bottlenecks by bringing high-performance SSDs to market, but also on solving the inherent endurance issues of flash. SMART Storage Systems products provide a powerful combination of performance, capacity, reliability and endurance enabling our Tier 1 OEM and enterprise customers to get the most out of their next-generation storage deployments."

For more information about SMART Storage Systems, please visit the company's website at http://www.smartstoragesys.com, the company's blog at http://www.smartstorageblog.com, or find us on Twitter at @SMARTSSD.

About SMART Storage Systems
SMART Storage Systems is a technology leader in the design, development and deployment of current and next-generation enterprise solid-state storage products. Combining leading-edge, enterprise-class design, and proven world-class support, SMART Storage Systems leverages its deep expertise in flash and enterprise storage technology. SMART Storage Systems delivers high-quality, high-reliability solutions to a broad customer base, including tier one storage and server OEMs. In support of these designs, SMART Storage Systems provides award-winning innovations in solid-state storage technology, such as NAND high-endurance Guardian™ technology, to a variety of customers in the enterprise storage, enterprise server, data center, defense and industrial markets. SMART Storage Systems is part of the SMART Holdings family of global companies. See www.smartstoragesys.com for more information.

About SMART Worldwide Holdings
The SMART family of companies are leading designers, manufacturers, and suppliers of electronic subsystems for the most demanding OEMs around the world. The SMART companies have led the way over the past 23 years providing standard and custom products to today's leading global OEMs crossing all major electronic industries. These industries include PC, enterprise and industrial servers, networking, telecom, defense, aerospace, gaming and embedded application markets. Taking innovations from the design stage through manufacturing and delivery, SMART Modular Technologies has developed a comprehensive memory product line that includes DRAM, SRAM and Flash memory in various form factors. SMART Storage Systems offers high-performance, high-capacity SSDs for enterprise, defense, aerospace, industrial automation, medical and transportation markets. SMART's presence in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Latin America enables it to provide its customers with proven expertise in international logistics, asset management and supply-chain management worldwide. See www.smartm.com for more information.