StarLink Teams with Net Optics to Address Increasingly Complex Data Center and Telecom Network Requirements

Resale agreement positions StarLink as a comprehensive solutions provider in the Middle Eastern Market

Dubai, UAE March 9th, 2010 – Net Optics, Inc., the global leader in intelligent network access solutions announced today the completion of a partnership with StarLink, of Dubai, UAE. The agreement builds on the success of past Net Optics reseller agreements. The enhanced partnership will enable StarLink customers to single source the full Net Optics portfolio when positioning compliance driven security solutions in the Middle East. The partnership covers the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan.

Businesses today are focused on making data centers more secure, agile, flexible and virtual in an effort to maximize performance, improve efficiencies and reduce costs. As IP voice, video and data traffic increases, and organizations roll out private clouds to support a diverse user community, IT organizations are also being required to meet more stringent service level agreements to minimize any negative impact on employee productivity or revenue generating services. A critical component for modern data centers to meet these demands is building a comprehensive monitoring access platform into the core fabric of the network.

Net Optics provides organizations with a flexible monitoring access platform that combines data monitoring, aggregation and security bypass switches with intelligent network Taps and intuitive management. Deploying the Net Optics monitoring access platform across the entire network infrastructure improves network and application uptime and performance, enables IT personnel to work more efficiently, decreases business risk by providing 100 percent visibility of mission-critical business applications, and multiplies the return on investment of expensive monitoring tools.

"Partnering with Net Optics enables our customers to reduce the cost and complexity of monitoring solutions. More monitoring appliances are being deployed such as Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems, Protocol Analyzers, Database Auditing and Network Probes to access traffic from a large number of network links," said Nidal Othman, Regional Sales & Marketing Manager for StarLink. "Net Optics solutions provide a combination of functionality including aggregating monitoring traffic from multiple links, regenerating traffic to multiple tools, pre-filtering traffic to offload tools, and directing traffic according to one-to-one and many-to-many port mappings. This enables organizations to use their monitoring tools more efficiently, to centralize traffic monitoring functions, and to share tools and traffic access among groups."

Uwe Skrzypek, Director of International Sales for Net Optics, commented that the new agreement with StarLink is a logical step forward based on the growth of the Middle Eastern markets, "StarLink customers will gain access to an enhanced solutions portfolio that delivers a comprehensive monitoring access platform across their entire network infrastructure."

About Net Optics

Net Optics is the global leader in intelligent network monitoring access solutions, helping more than 6,300 enterprises, service providers and government organizations improve network performance, enhance security and maintain regulatory compliance. The company's innovative solutions enable customers to gain 100 percent visibility into their networks using leading intrusion detection and prevention systems, protocol analyzers, firewalls and network probes. Net Optics offers a comprehensive suite of monitoring access solutions that enable complete, permanent visibility into any network link without data stream interference or introducing a point of failure. Net Optics maintains a global market presence through leading OEM partner and reseller networks.

About StarLink

StarLink, headquartered in Dubai, is the leading IT compliance driven solutions provider and was founded in 2005. StarLink is recognized as a "Trusted Security Advisor" and market leader in automating the entire IT compliance auditing process to help customers in the Middle East region reduce IT Risk, with a focus on enterprises in the Financial, Telco and Government sectors. StarLink works with organizations to achieve and sustain compliance and optimally manage risks through full policy, procedure and controls lifecycle management. StarLink's solution offerings are now installed in more than 200 data centers in the Middle East, including 100 of the top regional banks and 15 of the regional's top Telcos. The company’s customers trust StarLink to secure their critical enterprise data and safeguard access to sensitive data in the most demanding datacenter environments in the region by monitoring, security and auditing privileged user access to provide 100% visibility on all activities.