Aerospatiale Leads The Development Of A Collaborative Pan-European Platform For Product Data Sharing With IONA Technologies' Orbix.

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 21, 1998--Fueled by the growing collaboration between organisations in the European aerospace and automotive industries, Aerospatiale, one of the world leaders in aeronautical manufacturing, has used IONA Technologies' (NASDAQ:IONAY) Orbix(r) to integrate the disparate Product Data Management (PDM) and Computer Aided Design (CAD) IT systems used by European manufacturers.

The solution, developed as part of a pan-European initiative known as AIT-RISESTEP, was led by Aerospatiale and involved a consortium of key European industry players including BMW (FWB:BMW), Bull Information Systems, Caddetc, CSTB, Dassault Systemes (NASDAQ:DASTY), Gida, ProSTEP, Matra Datavision, Renault (SBF-Bourse de Paris:13190), Rover and Volvo (NASDAQ:VOLVY).

The AIT-RISESTEP initiative is based on two computer industry standards; STEP (Standard Exchange for Product Model Data) which facilitates the exchange of data between graphical and management applications and the CORBA(r) (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) software standard with Orbix, which enables different software applications to work together. The result is an integrated manufacturing solution that can be used in each partner location.

IONA's Orbix is the world's leading implementation of the CORBA standard and has been specifically designed to make software work together. The Orbix product family enables software developers to create software applications that can incorporate a wide range of different systems such as Mainframes, UNIX systems, Windows and Java.

The AIT-RISESTEP project reflects the growing trend of cross-border cooperation in the European industry. With AIT-RISESTEP, the organisations involved identified the necessity for shared databases which can be accessed by a range of design, analysis and management systems both locally and remotely via LAN, WAN and remote links. To deliver the required solution, Aerospatiale and the AIT-RISESTEP consortium built an open standards framework based on IONA's Orbix. Four different client applications have been developed to highlight and examine different scenarios throughout the engineering process. With STEP and Orbix, PDM and CAD/CAM information can now be accessed and manipulated from a choice of platforms from leading IT vendors.

"The success of international collaborative agreements hinges very much on the ease and speed at which information can be shared and accessed among the partners," commented Nicolas Figay, CAD/CAM and PDM Systems Expert at Aerospatiale. "The AIT-RISESTEP project demanded an architecture capable of integrating a wide range of diverse PDMS (Product Data Management System) applications which were distributed across numerous platforms. IONA's Orbix offered the most scaleable infrastructure to fulfill this requirement. More importantly, Orbix was the only proven CORBA solution available on the multiple systems deployed across the twelve organisations."

"AIT-RISESTEP has proven to be a very successful part of the Advanced Information Technology (AIT) project which was funded by the European Commission's IT Programme, ESPRIT," commented Dr. Erastos Filos, Scientific Officer for Concurrent Engineering & Product Data Modeling at the European Commission. "The demonstrations at the Aerospatiale site were well presented and showed that clients can be developed to access a heterogeneous product data system using CORBA and STEP. Care must be taken that the competitive advantage achieved by this project is not lost".

"One of the key challenges facing organisations across the globe today is systems integration. The removal of trade barriers in Europe has heightened this integration challenge, as more and more organisations need to make their internal computer systems work in tandem with third party systems," commented Noel Toolan, Senior Vice President of Market Development at IONA Technologies. "The more partners involved in international engineering partnerships, the greater the risk and complexity in terms of achieving successful interoperability between different IT systems. However the successful deployment of Orbix in the AIT-RISESTEP project illustrates how collaborative business activities can benefit from a proven, open architecture which also protects their existing IT investments."

Aerospatiale is one of the world's leading aerospace companies with 37,000 employees. With a renowned policy of innovation and a strong tradition in research and development, Aerospatiale has played a leading partner role in the design and manufacture of the AIRBUS family of Civil Aircraft, the ATR family (Regional Transport Aircraft), a wide range of helicopters from 1.5 ton to the 9 ton class within Eurocopter, ballistic and tactical Missiles and Space exploitation with ARIANE and Satellites. Internet: http://www.aerospatiale.fr

Founded in 1991, IONA Technologies (NASDAQ:IONAY) is the world leader in Making Software Work Together(tm). IONA's leading product, Orbix(r), provides customers with a standards based enterprise middleware solution to make diverse software components work together in a reliable, dependable and scaleable manner. According to IDC's market research, Orbix, which is used by over 3,500 businesses worldwide and conforms to the Object Management Group's CORBA specification, is the world's leading object middleware product.

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Orbix is a registered trademark of IONA Technologies. Making Software Work Together is a trademark of IONA Technologies. CORBA is a trademark or registered trademark of Object Management Group, Inc. in the US and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.