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NBA Expands Relationship With SGI on Groundbreaking Digital Media Management System

After successfully unveiling the NBA Digital Media Management System with SGI during the 2006-07 NBA season, the first-of-its-kind system in professional sports enabled the league to simultaneously ingest and archive footage from up to 14 NBA games, edit the archival content on the fly, provide full game broadcasts, clips and other NBA content to 214 countries worldwide.

The extended relationship between the two companies will enable the NBA to accelerate and double the historical digital archiving effort by ingesting 60,000 hours of video content each year. Overall, the entire history of the NBA archive, which contains more than 400,000 hours of content dating back to 1946, will ultimately be digitized.

"Continuing to work with SGI on the expansion of the NBA Digital Media Management System ensures the digital preservation of the entire history of the NBA," said Mike Rokosa, Vice President of Engineering for the NBA. "Additionally, with this groundbreaking digital system, we can easily develop, store and retrieve NBA content for our media and business partners around the world and distribute it on a variety of platforms."

"The NBA has long made strategic and innovative use of the latest technologies to bring the game experience in its most compelling form to the largest audience possible," said SGI CEO Robert "Bo" Ewald. "We were very pleased to participate in the NBA's groundbreaking digital media management system, which has been boosting productivity and streamlining one of the broadcast industry's most intensive workflows. We look forward to working with the NBA to scale this facility as its needs grow in step with its remarkable vision."

The NBA Digital Media Management System allows the NBA and all 30 teams to access content from any workstation without having to copy files onto local desktops. By utilizing the SGI(R) InfiniteStorage Data Migration Facility (DMF), the league is more efficient as the system automatically maintains the more frequently requested content on faster spinning disk arrays, while placing rarely needed content to more economical storage.

About the NBA

The NBA, founded in 1946, is a global sports and entertainment brand that features 30 teams inthe United States andCanada. During the 2007-08 season, NBA games will reach 215 countries and territories in 41 languages via a record 202 television partners. The league's worldwide reach is also reflected in the 75 international players from 30 countries and territories on NBA rosters. Domestically, the NBA broadcasted 142 regular-season games on national television last season on ABC, TNT, ESPN and ESPN2, and broke attendance records for the fourth consecutive season.

NBA TV, launched in 1999 as the first 24-hour television channel created and operated by a professional sports league, is distributed to 80 countries. NBA merchandise is sold in more than 100,000 stores in 100 countries on six continents. NBA.com averages more than five million daily visits. More than 60 percent of the Web site's visitors come from outsidethe United States.

NBA Cares is the league's community outreach initiative that builds on the NBA's long tradition of addressing important social issues inthe United States and around the world. To date, members of the NBA family -- including teams, current and former players, and the league office -- have contributed 400,000 hours of hands-on volunteer service, raised more than $58 million for charity, and created over 200 places where kids and families can live, learn or play. NBA Cares works with internationally recognized youth-serving programs that support education, youth and family development, and health- related causes, including UNICEF; the Make-a-Wish Foundation; and the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis.

SGI - Innovation for Results(TM)

SGI (Nasdaq: SGIC) is a leader in high-performance computing. SGI delivers a broad range of high-performance server, storage and visualization solutions along with industry-leading professional services and support that enable its customers to overcome the challenges of complex data-intensive workflows and accelerate breakthrough discoveries, innovation and information transformation. SGI helps customers solve significant challenges whether it's enhancing the quality of life through drug research, designing and manufacturing safer and more efficient cars and airplanes, studying global climate change, providing technologies for homeland security and defense, or helping enterprises manage large data. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered inSunnyvale, Calif., and can be found on the Web at sgi.com.

SGI, the SGI cube and the SGI logo are registered trademarks of SGI inthe United States and/or other countries worldwide. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.

SGI Media Contact: Marla Robinson, 256.773.2371, marlar@sgi.com.

SOURCE NBA and SGI