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Virtual Iron Software, Inc. Announces Advisory Board

Experienced industry veterans to advise the virtualization start-up

Acton, Mass., February 7, 2005 - Virtual Iron Software, Inc. -  www.virtualiron.com   today announced it has established an advisory board founded with industry leaders for the datacenter virtualization company and named Steve Beckhardt , Dr. John Carter, Dr. Charles E. Leiserson, Billy Marshall, Richard Napolitano and Christopher M. Stone as founding members.

The Virtual Iron Software advisory board provides expert consultancy in evolving the market strategy and technology direction of the company's datacenter virtualization solution. Board members will participate in and advise on partnerships, technology direction and be an advocate for customer requirements.

"Bringing to market a truly revolutionary virtual computing platform and developing a successful business model require the best minds in the business," said Scott Davis, executive vice president and Chief Technology Officer, of Virtual Iron Software. "We are extremely fortunate that the Virtual Iron management team is being extended by these accomplished industry veterans and notable academic professors. All are excited about our opportunity to reinvent how server technology is utilized in the datacenter".

Virtual Iron Software will soon be introducing technology that delivers datacenter virtualization without bounds by providing customers with a comprehensive virtual computing environment.

New Technical Advisory Board Has Virtualization Expertise, Industry Knowledge Virtual Iron Software's new advisory board includes:
Steve Beckhardt has worked in the area of distributed computing systems for the past 25 years and currently is president of Red Brook Harbor Consulting, a software consulting and design firm. Previously he was vice president of software engineering at ThingMagic, a company working in the area of RFID and intelligent embedded control systems.  Before joining ThingMagic, he was an IBM distinguished engineer and chief architect of the IBM Life Sciences group.  He helped develop the core technology in Lotus Notes and Domino as president and co-founder of Iris Associates, an IBM subsidiary. And, as a senior member of the VAX/VMS Operating System group at Digital Equipment Corp., he was one of the principle architects of the VAXCluster computer system, widely regarded as the first commercially successful clustered computing system. Mr. Beckhardt holds a B.S degree in physics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an M.S. degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts.

Dr. John Carter is an Associate Professor in the School of Computing at the University of Utah.  Previously he was the Chief Scientist at Mangosoft for several years, and subsequently served on their advisory board.  Dr. Carter is a respected scholar and researcher with extensive knowledge of computer architecture, distributed systems, operating systems, and computer networks.   His research focuses primarily on memory coherence, scalable data management, and large-scale multiprocessor architectures.  He holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (1986) and an M.S. (1989) and Ph.D. (1992) in Computer Science from Rice University.

Dr. Charles E. Leiserson is Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a member of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, a member of the Lab's Theory of Computation Group, and head of its Supercomputing Technologies Group. Leiserson's research centers on developing theoretical principles of parallel and distributed computing. Recently, he has focused on dynamic, asynchronous parallel computing.

Billy Marshall has spent the past 6 years with Red Hat, serving the last four  years as vice president of North America sales.  Prior to Red Hat, Marshall spent several years in various roles with IBM and General Electric. He holds graduate degrees in management and engineering from MIT, and an undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech. 

Richard Napolitano is a 21 year veteran of the storage industry who has led two successful startups to successful growth and acquisition and is currently President/GM USA Sales for Sun Microsystems.    He was an early investor and CEO of Pirus Networks, develop of intelligent storage switches, which was acquired in late 2002 by Sun.   Prior to Pirus, He was co-founder and CEO of Data Kinesis which was acquired by Adaptec.   He also was a General Partner in Alchemy Angels, a venture investment and management consulting company and held several engineering development positions at Digital Equipment Corporation.  He currently serves on the board of RaidCore of Nashua, N.H. and also serves on the board of Advisors of Chaparral Networks of Longmont, CO and Astrum Software of Boston, MA.    

Christopher M. Stone was most recently vice-chairman of Novell, Inc. and during his two stints with the company, was in charge of all engineering, product engineering, product development, support, marketing, product management, partnering and alliances.  In particular, he helped Novell migrate its networking software and services to Linux, and directed efforts to acquire Ximian (Linux desktop) and SUSE (Linux operating system).

About Virtual Iron Software, Inc.
Virtual Iron Software, Inc. provides the only enterprise-class virtual computing platform enabling customers to achieve the highest levels of datacenter utilization, flexibility and significantly lower capital costs.  Founded in March 2003 by a highly regarded team of computer industry veterans, Virtual Iron Software is a privately held company based in Acton, Mass.  More information is available at www.virtualiron.com .

Contacts:
Bob Guilbert, Virtual Iron Software
978-849-1200
bguilbert@virtualiron.com

Bill Baker
Baker Communications Group, LLC
860-350-9100
wbaker@bakercg.com

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