EARTH SCIENCES

DataDirect Networks (DDN) has announced the ten-year anniversary of its first-ever product shipment to its first customer, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Remarkably, DDN's S2A6000 storage system which shipped to NASA in June 2000, consistently outperformed expectations, delivered world class performance and computation, and remains dutifully in production service today, more than a decade later. This first customer shipment marked the beginning of an extraordinary journey which established DDN as a leader in a world experiencing a tidal wave growth in images, video and content. NASA, like hundreds of other world-leading organizations who have come to rely on DDN technology, had the foresight to invest and utilize the right technological tools to achieve their objectives.

"Thanks to DDN's design quality and commitment to support, our original product purchases have persevered through a full decade of 'round-the-clock usage," said Scott Sinno, CSC Systems Engineer for NASA. "Few disk-based products within the HPC/Enterprise storage sector can lay claim to a useful lifespan without major component upgrades anywhere near that long."

"In a world where most products become obsolete a few months after they are released, we are very proud to engineer systems which serve the needs of our customers for more than a decade -- that is an amazing return on investment," said Alex Bouzari, DataDirect Networks CEO. "We are incredibly grateful to the scientists, researchers and IT teams at NASA for their ongoing support. The intellectual rigor, vision, and spirit of innovation that we shared with NASA remain the heart and soul of DDN."

DDN and NASA recently celebrated their 10-year relationship with a reception near the Goddard Space Flight Center. Gordon Manning, DDN Vice President of Engineering, and Dave Fellinger, CTO of DDN, both part of the original DDN engagement with NASA, hosted the event.

"It was an honor to return to NASA for this event," said Manning. "In the ten years since we first shipped the S2A6000, DDN technology has changed the world -- enabling landmark advancement in science, the arts, and communications that weren't possible before. We look forward to continued collaboration with NASA and other thought-leader customers to prepare them for the next 10 years of data-intensive computation."