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Accelrys Aligns with Microsoft to Meet Demands for Scientific Software That Runs on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003; Pilot Software to Be Shown at the Supercomputing 2005 Conference in Seattle

Business Wire, Nov 15, 2005

SAN DIEGO -- Today at its AccelrysWorld annual conference and user event, Accelrys, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACCL) announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft in order to meet demand for scientific software that runs on the Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003. Pilot versions of Accelrys' CHARMm and CASTEP simulation programs will be shown running on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 at the Supercomputing 2005 conference in Seattle, November 14-18, 2005.

"We are excited about Microsoft's effort to make high-performance computing (HPC) easier to access, deploy, and manage," commented Accelrys' President and CEO Mark Emkjer. "We are pleased to be working with Microsoft and its solution partners, IBM and HP, to provide life and materials science researchers with key resources. Our customers face an increasing need to perform compute-intensive calculations. Making HPC more accessible has the potential to both lower the cost of computing, as well as extend our scientific applications out to new user groups and into new parts of the discovery and development process, thereby improving efficiency and time to market."

Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 is Microsoft's entry into the world of high-performance computing, and is designed to accelerate time-to-insight by providing a high performance computing platform that is simple to deploy, operate, and integrate with existing infrastructure and tools.

"Microsoft is pleased that Accelrys shares its goal to deliver high-performance computing to all researchers, and commercial users alike," said Kyril Faenov, director of high performance computing at Microsoft Corp. "We hope to free up researchers' time to tackle their most complex problems by helping them run scientific software in a simplified HPC environment."

Pilot versions of Accelrys' CHARMm and CASTEP simulation programs running on Windows Compute Cluster Server 2003 will be shown in the Microsoft booth at the Supercomputing 2005 conference. CHARMm, a widely used molecular simulation program with applications in protein modeling, drug design, structural biology and nanotechnology, will be running on IBM hardware, while CASTEP, a materials simulation program used in nanotechnology research, solid state physics, materials science, chemistry and chemical engineering, will be running on HP hardware.

About Accelrys

Accelrys, Inc. (NASDAQ:ACCL) is a leading provider of software for computation, simulation, and the management and mining of scientific data used by biologists, chemists and materials scientists, including nanotechnology researchers, for product design as well as drug discovery and development. Accelrys technology and services are designed to meet the needs of today's leading research organizations. The company is headquartered in San Diego, California. For more information about Accelrys, visit its website at http://www.accelrys.com/.> All product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act"). Such statements, including statements relating to the software discussed in this press release, are subject to risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the risks that the software will not be successfully completed, developed or achieve market acceptance, demand relating to such software, and other risks and uncertainties described in documents Accelrys has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent report on Form 10-Q. All forward-looking statements in this document are qualified entirely by the cautionary statements included in this document and such filings. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from results expressed or implied by forward-looking statements contained in this document. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this document. Accelrys claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Act and, disclaims any intent or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based.