Compellent Launches Customer Council

Business partners and their customers provide input on product and market direction

Minneapolis, April 17, 2003 - Compellent Technologies, a rapidly emerging network storage company, today announced the Compellent Customer Council (C3), a formalized market development program bringing business partners, end users, and industry experts together to understand and address today's storage requirements. The C3 will also act as a resource for Compellent's product and market direction.

In 2002, Compellent received the largest venture-backed, first round technology financing in Minnesota. As a result, the company received numerous inquiries about its activities. "People were curious about our plans and wanted to get involved early," recounts Phil Soran, president and CEO of Compellent. "Our first reaction was that it was too early. We then realized the value of our partners and their customers participating in the design our offerings."

Compellent kicked off the initial C3 meetings with both business partners and their customers. Feedback included insight to their pain points, in addition to desired product features. Membership has grown to 35 individuals who will meet every 6-8 weeks to provide input. Response from the initial meeting was enthusiastic. "It's about time someone comes to ask us what we want before product completion. Usually companies come to us after the fact and ask us what we think," said one representative from a Midwest multimedia company.

The C3 provides business partners and their customers a link to the product development process. "We've created a model highly optimized for our channel focus, specifically dedicated to our business partners.," says Gary Orenstein, vice president of marketing at Compellent "In addition to fine tuning the product, we can also help partners fine tune the services they will provide to their customers based upon Compellent's offerings. All parties benefit from this interaction by accelerating the time to understand and deploy effective storage solutions."

About Compellent Technologies
Compellent Technologies is developing a new storage architecture delivering the utmost flexibility to store, manage, and recover mission-critical data. Headquartered in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, Compellent has secured their first round of funding from Crescendo Ventures and El Dorado Ventures. For additional information visit www.compellent.com.

Copyright © 2004 Compellent. All Rights Reserved.