IONA Technologies Extends French Reseller Network With Five New Channel Partners

Business Wire, Sept 16, 1997

DUBLIN, Ireland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 16, 1997--The growing adoption of object middleware and CORBA-based solutions by French organizations has led IONA Technologies (NASDAQ:IONAY), the world leader in object middleware, to today announce a significant expansion of its reseller network in France. Five new companies including 3S Softwares & Systemes Speciaux, Fastcase, IMA Informatique, Objectif Technologie, and Soleri Cigel join IONA's existing French reseller Ingenia in providing IONA's leading Orbix(r) family to customers in France. IONA plans to focus on working closely with these companies to deliver the best range of technologies and services to meet the needs of French organizations.

IONA's Orbix is the leading implementation of the Object Management Group's (OMG) CORBA standard. According to a recent study by independent research firm, IDC, IONA is the world's leading vendor of object middleware and CORBA software. Orbix and CORBA provide a framework for developers and organizations to quickly build 'best of breed' applications integrating their new and existing computer platforms and development tools. Currently IONA supports a wide range of enterprise platforms including Mainframe MVS, OpenVMS, UNIX, Windows NT, Windows 95, OS/2 and real-time operating systems such as pSOS and VxWorks. In addition Orbix allows developers to use their favorite tools and languages including; COBOL, C , Smalltalk, Java, Visual Basic, Delphi and Powerbuilder.

"We are very pleased to have signed this agreement with IONA which will allow our customers to benefit from the advantages of the CORBA world," said Pierre Andrey, CEO of 3S Softwares & Systemes Speciaux. "This partnership will help us to maximize our business, selling the Orbix product range along with combined services such as consulting, integration and training. We expect to strongly contribute to expanding IONA's presence in the French market."

According to Michel Mazenc, CEO at Fastcase Technology; "The distribution agreement between Fastcase Technology and IONA for the company's Orbix products, emphasizes our full commitment as a supplier of new high tech software solutions within the Object-Oriented technology environment. Thanks to products such as Insure and Codewizard, Fastcase Technology has become a skilful and recognised business partner to the most important Industrial and Financial organizations in the C, C and Web development market. With Orbix, we can offer a leading architecture product, along with its CORBA conformance, to provide our customers with a global offering, along with the skills and experience we have gained in the past."

IMA-Informatique focuses on training and consulting in Object Technology. Hugues Marguet at IMA comments, "Our expertise in programming languages such as Java, C and Smalltalk along with Methods, Internet and Intranet technology and distributed objects has given us solid industry experience and teaching techniques that are user friendly and provide our customers with a safe migration to Object Technology. Our new partnership with IONA is one of the key achievements of our development policy. We can now give our customers the best services in training and consulting on distributed objects, thanks to IONA's products and technology.

"The partnership between IONA Technologies, the world leader of the CORBA standard, and Objectif Technologie, excelling in systems design and integration, creates a synergy of competencies capable of offering world class solutions to improve customers competitiveness," commented Annie Combelles, executive vice president at Objectif Technologie.

For Paul Vauthey, CEO of Soleri Cigel, "IONA's Orbix is the best product on the market to meet our clients' need to implement applications in complete security based on distributed objects with heterogeneous platforms."

"French organizations are examining the integration problems facing their businesses and are identifying Orbix and CORBA as the right solution for integrating their existing IT resources with the latest technologies to deliver 'super applications'," commented Margaret Gallery, senior vice president of sales at IONA Technologies. "The success of our 'Orbix Everywhere' strategy combined with the growing momentum of CORBA and object-oriented approaches to the corporate IT infrastructure, is generating a lot of interest in our product family. To ensure we can satisfy this interest we are putting in place a very strong local network of specialized resellers, who can offer indigenous French organizations with the local expertise they need to build these new solutions."

For more information on IONA's new French resellers please visit our Internet site at: http://www.iona.com/IONA/distributor/europe/frameurope.html

IONA Technologies was founded in 1991 with the mission to enable businesses to integrate multiple, diverse software applications spanning the entire distributed enterprise. IONA's leading product, Orbix(r), allows organizations to build software components (or objects) with open, standard interfaces so that they can communicate with any other software conforming to the same standard. According to IDC's market research, Orbix, which is used by over 2,000 businesses worldwide, is the world's leading object middleware product. Orbix, conforms to the Object Management Group's CORBA specification. Earlier this year, IONA's Orbix won the prestigious Network Computing magazine Well-Connected Award as "Best Orb Middleware" and the company was chosen for an "Editors' Choice" award from Software magazine's Software 500 listing. Internet: http://www.iona.com - Information: press@iona.com -0-