EDMONTON, ALBERTA--(Marketwire - Sept. 30, 2008) - The 2009 winners of the annual Canada's Top 10^TM Competition have been selected (www.topcanadiancompanies.ca). Winners will gather on October 7th at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa to hone their presentation skills, meet local and regional investors, and prepare themselves for the first leg of the 2009 Investment Forum series. DataGardens will participate as a presenting company at the 12th Annual Ottawa Venture and Technology Summit on October 9th (www.ottawavts.com).

DataGardens offers hardware and software systems that change the way businesses provide IT services to their branch offices. DataGardens' systems allow multi-office enterprises to consolidate IT infrastructure and administration in a central office while migrating "virtualized" IT resources back and forth to branch offices. This results in dramatically reduced IT infrastructure and administrative cost, while providing increased flexibility, security, and resiliency.

"DataGardens breaks down traditional IT barriers and allows organizations to extend the benefits of virtualization across multiple sites," said Geoff Hayward, President and CEO of DataGardens. "In addition to ensuring business continuity, DataGardens enables multi-office organizations to effortlessly migrate and share IT resources across centres according to business need, providing increased efficiencies such as reduced networking, power, and cooling costs."

Reg Joseph, Vice President of Finance and Operations added, "DataGardens is honored to be selected as one of Canada's Top 10^TM Competition winners and delighted to be representing Edmonton in the technology category." "Canada's Top 10^TM provides us a fantastic opportunity to highlight our unique solution to the investment community."

Winners are chosen by an independent expert panel of Canadian and U.S. venture capitalists. Originally developed to promote the 10 most promising life science companies from across Canada to Canadian and international investors and partners, the competition now showcases Canada's life sciences, cleantech and technology sectors. Working in partnership with Canadian Consulates in Boston, New York City, San Diego and San Francisco, winning companies will participate in targeted investment forums in each city, providing them with an opportunity to meet with Venture Capital investors who have expressed an active interest in financing these companies. Since its inception in 1999, competition alumni have secured more than $522M in venture capital financing.

Canada's Top 10^TM is organized by OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation) and presented by Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, the winners include a wide variety of companies from the life science, cleantech and technology sectors.

"OCRI is pleased to play an active role in the growth of so many exceptional Canadian companies," said Michelle Scarborough, Vice President, Investment and Commercialization, OCRI. "This is a successful program as evidenced by the investment in past winners. Through our ongoing outreach to the rest of Canada, the best companies from three key innovation sectors can continue to benefit from exposure to VC's, other investors and potential strategic partners."

Of the 30 winning companies, DataGardens is the only winner from the Edmonton area, with one additional winner from Alberta. Other provinces represented include British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, and Nova Scotia. For more information about the Canada's Top 10^TM Competition visit www.topcanadiancompanies.ca.

2009 Canada's Top 10TM Companies:


Life Science
Axela Inc. (Toronto, Ontario)
DiaMedica Inc. (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
iCo Therapeutics Inc. (Vancouver, British Columbia)
ImmunoVaccine Technologies Inc. (Halifax, Nova Scotia)
Indel Therapeutics Inc. (Vancouver, British Columbia)
Kane Biotech Inc. (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
PlantForm Corporation (Guelph, Ontario)
Profound Medical Inc. (Toronto, Ontario)
Sanomune Inc. (Winnipeg, Manitoba)
Viron Therapeutics Inc. (London, Ontario)


Cleantech
Elementa (St. Catharines, Ontario)
EnvirEau Technologies Inc. (Richmond, British Columbia)
Odotech Inc. (Montreal, Quebec)
Paradigm Environmental Technologies, Inc (Vancouver, British Columbia)
Quadra Solar Corporation (Ottawa, Ontario)
REGEN Energy (Toronto, Ontario)
Sempa Power Systems Ltd. (North Vancouver, British Columbia)
SiXtron Advanced Materials Inc (Dorval, Quebec)
Taransys Inc (Ottawa, Ontario)
Thinkflex Solar, Inc. (Hamilton, Ontario) 


Technology
Accedian Networks, Inc. (St. Laurent, Quebec)
BelAir Networks (Ottawa, Ontario)
DataGardens Inc. (Edmonton, Alberta)
Ecobee (Toronto, Ontario)
Evoco Inc. (Calgary, Alberta)
I Love Rewards Inc. (Toronto, Ontario)
IPeak Networks Incorporated (Ottawa, Ontario)
Redknee (Mississauga, Ontario)
Trellia Networks Inc. (Montreal, Quebec)
Wavesat Inc. (Montreal, Quebec)

About DataGardens:

DataGardens is a pioneer in wide area virtual resource sharing. The company provides solutions to the challenges of sharing information systems between multiple offices and even between individual users that may be spread around the world. DataGardens products reduce cost, improve productivity, and enhance security. DataGardens technology combines the convenience and cost effectiveness of IP storage networking with the flexibility of multi-resource virtualization and the global reach of wide area data services.

Based in Edmonton, Canada, DataGardens is a privately funded company. For more information, please see www.DataGardens.com.

About OCRI:

OCRI (Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation), the city's economic development corporation, is leading the way for Ottawa. OCRI is the rallying point to bring business, education and research together to create the winning economic conditions that allow Ottawa's technology companies to thrive locally and compete globally. At OCRI we promote sustainable economic development to maintain our high quality of life. For more information on OCRI visit our website at www.ocri.ca and for more information on the Ottawa Region please visit www.ottawaregion.com.

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