French Inland Revenue Department Chooses Professional Open Source; JBoss, Inc. and Atos Origin Selected for the 'COPERNIC' Program

Business Wire, August 2, 2004

ATLANTA -- Atos Origin, an international IT services provider, and JBoss, Inc., the Professional Open Source company, today announced that the French Inland Revenue Service, the Direction Generale des Impots (DGI) and the General Department of Public Accounts (Direction Generale de la Comptabilite Publique - DGCP) have both selected its open source solution for the COPERNIC program, the overhaul of all tax IT system applications.

Following a tender request by the French Ministry of Finance and Trade, the JBoss Application Server was selected as part of an innovative open source solution to supply and support a J2EE(TM) application server. The solution, delivered by Atos Origin, will also include support services for the project.

Due to the importance of the new tax applications that will eventually be developed and used by the Ministry, high levels of support and maintenance for the application server are required. Atos Origin and JBoss have committed to providing proactive and reactive maintenance and high levels of support during the development of the applications.

Atos Origin's partnership with JBoss is of vital importance to the project. A direct channel to the open source community has been created, allowing fast, efficient and high-level service from a large pool of expert JBoss developers. The support contract for the COPERNIC program is for a period of three years and will include initial support during deployment, ongoing server monitoring and training. The duration and scale of the project serves as a milestone for the uptake of open source within large organizations where reliability and consistency are of utmost importance.

"The advantages of open source are already well-known: very low cost--or free of charge--and source code opening that guarantees the reliability, durability and security of these solutions," said Jean-Marie Lapeyre, COPERNIC technical director. "The JBoss Application Server was selected for its interoperability with existing infrastructure and its ease of maintenance. It also meets our requirements for compliance with regulation and standards, making it a perfect fit.

Through a detailed evaluation conducted during the tender process, we have been able to check the reliability and performance of the proposed solution as well as the high quality support to be provided by Atos Origin and JBoss, Inc."

"The development of a Professional Open Source solution that is complete and consistent is a major strategic target for Atos Origin. In a growing number of areas, open source has now achieved a proven level of maturity and many companies and authorities are starting to use it more and more," explained Jean-Pierre Barberis, vice president, Public Sector, Atos Origin. "Atos Origin has an international expertise center that is used to test open source, create close relations with open source communities, assess the long term value of open source and implement an adequate services support. We can therefore play a role of distribution and support, whilst ensuring that we are providing full control of the application server and its evolution."

"The choice of the JBoss Application Server by the COPERNIC program shows the strong trend towards adopting Professional Open Source solutions by the large state bodies," said Sacha Labourey, general manager of JBoss Europe. "Thanks to its partnership with Atos Origin, JBoss, Inc. is now in a position to provide high-quality services to large institutions that choose Professional Open Source."

About JBoss, Inc.

Through its Professional Open Source model, JBoss, Inc. is making open source a safe choice for the enterprise. The JBoss team of technical experts drives core development of freely distributed open source software products and stands behind them with 24x7 production support, development support, training, consulting and documentation. The company's federation of open source middleware now includes Tomcat, Hibernate, JGroups, JBossCache, Nukes on JBoss and the JBoss Application Server, the industry's fastest growing J2EE application server in use, with over five million downloads. Corporate Express, La Quinta and Nielsen Media Research, among others, rely on JBoss products for mission-critical enterprise applications. Partners who embed or bundle JBoss products and resell JBoss services include Apple, Computer Associates, HP, Novell and Unisys. JBoss has headquarters in Atlanta, Ga. and Neuchatel, Switzerland. For additional information, please visit www.jboss.com.

About Atos Origin

Atos Origin is an international information technology (IT) services company. Its business is turning client vision into results through the application of consulting, systems integration and managed operations. The company's annual revenues are more than EUR 5 billion and it employs 47,000 people in 50 countries. Atos Origin is the Worldwide Information Technology Partner for the Olympic Games and its clients include ABN AMRO, Akzo Nobel, Alstom, BNP Paribas, BP, Ericsson, EDF, Euronext, Fiat, France Telecom, ICI, ING, KPN, Lucent, Philips, Renault, Royal Bank of Scotland, Saudi Aramco, Schlumberger, Shell, Telecom Italia, UBS, UK Department for Work and Pensions, Unilever, Vivendi Universal and Vodafone. For more information, please visit the company's web site at http://www.atosorigin.com.