NetApp will discontinue its SnapMirror® for Open Systems (SMOS) product line and development. SMOS is just one of NetApp's software products for heterogeneous data replication and recovery. NetApp originally acquired the product through its acquisition of Topio, an Israeli-based company, in December 2006. The NetApp facility in Haifa, Israel, currently employs 51 people and will be closed as of January 15, 2009. NetApp has not made final employment decisions regarding our employees in Haifa.

Our decision to terminate SMOS product development was based on customer priorities and actual purchase histories. The market for replication products for disaster recovery purposes is dominated by homogeneous, rather than multivendor, solutions. Our "any-to-any" solution with SMOS was never adopted by customers in the way we anticipated.

Other versions of SnapMirror remain fully supported and still have development teams and road maps intact. NetApp has additional products and technologies-for both primary and secondary storage environments-to deliver "any-to-NetApp®" data protection solutions in storage management, backup, archiving, and security. We see strong customer interest in these business segments within the enterprise storage market and remain committed to these investments.

NetApp is also committed to supporting existing customers who have deployed SMOS. We are in the process of issuing an End of Availability (EOA) announcement that communicates to customers that they will have three years of maintenance and technical support for their SMOS purchases.