IONA Launches Celtix Advanced Service Engine.

Open Source Subscription Offering Delivers Small-footprint, Powerful and Pluggable Service Creation Engine for Distributed SOA Deployments

DUBLIN, Ireland & WALTHAM, Mass. -- IONA[R] Technologies (NASDAQ: IONA), a world leader in distributed service-oriented architecture (SOA) solutions for performance-demanding IT environments, today announced availability of the Celtix Advanced Service Engine[TM]. This open source subscription offering from IONA, based on code from the Apache Incubator CXF project, provides users with a small-footprint, pluggable service engine that is the fundamental underpinning of distributed SOA deployments. Employing a micro-kernel architecture that allows for significant extensibility, the Celtix Advanced Service Engine is intended to deliver high performance, fully featured service creation, integration and flexible reuse of technical and business service components. The introduction of IONA's Celtix Advanced Service Engine coincides with the launch of IONA's Celtix Enterprise open source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) offering (release dated December 4, 2006).

The Celtix Advanced Service Engine is a certified and tested distribution based on code from the Apache Incubator project CXF, delivered along with corresponding enterprise-quality support, training and consulting provided by IONA services. The availability of an open source service engine, backed by the experience and expertise of a proven vendor like IONA, empowers customers to leverage the benefits of open source while mitigating the perceived risks. Because existing Web services standards, such as SOAP, WS-RM, JAX-WS and others, are supported, services created using the Celtix Advanced Service Engine are interoperable and can be deployed alongside Web services created in other SOA environments. This inherent flexibility allows customers to deploy a SOA infrastructure in the manner most in line with their business and technology requirements.

"Open source based services frameworks benefit from the breadth and depth of protocol and format support fueled by the open source project's pace of development and diverse pool of developer talent," said Michael Cot[c], Industry Analyst, RedMonk. "Adding in a layer of commercial support can help companies not only keep the software running smoothly, but also make using it easier and more effective for their business needs."

IONA's Celtix Advanced Service Engine features support for the multiple standards found in a typical SOA environment. These include several Java and Web services standards including SOAP 1.1 and 1.2, JAX-WS, WS-RM, WS-Addressing, and WS-Security, among others. Further, the Celtix Advanced Service Engine allows customers to send SOAP or XML messages over HTTP or JMS, and the extensibility API empowers users to add bindings to support additional message format support as may be required by their evolving business and technology needs. The flexible deployment model of the Celtix Advanced Service Engine supports the use of Apache Tomcat, Spring, JBI or SCA containers, and can be used in JEE or stand-alone environments.

"Our customers are constantly looking at ways to generate greater and faster return on investment and reduce total cost of IT operations while at the same time modernizing their systems. Many are turning to open source to help accomplish these goals," said Andrew O'Sullivan, vice president, Services, IONA. "The Celtix Advanced Service Engine gives our customers an open source option backed by IONA's world class services, support and consulting, offering tremendous flexibility for executing a distributed SOA strategy."

The Celtix Advanced Service Engine is available now for download. For subscription information or to download please visit http://www.iona.com/solutions/opensource.

About IONA

For more than a decade, IONA[R] Technologies (NASDAQ: IONA) has been a world leader in delivering high-performance integration solutions for Global 2000 IT environments. IONA pioneered standards-based integration with its CORBA-based Orbix[R] products. Artix[TM], IONA's extensible Enterprise Service Bus, enables customers to leverage Service Oriented Architecture to generate greater ROI, streamline and modernize IT environments and lower the total cost of IT operation.

IONA's active participation in the open source community, including its leadership of the Eclipse Foundation SOA Tooling Platform Project, is a natural extension of the company's history of solving computing challenges by leveraging open standards and distributed architectures.

IONA is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, with U.S. headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts and offices worldwide. For additional information about IONA, visit our Web site at http://www.iona.com.

IONA, IONA Technologies, the IONA logo, Orbix, High Performance Integration, Artix, Celtix, Celtix Advanced Service Engine and Making Software Work Together are trademarks or registered trademarks of IONA Technologies PLC and/or its subsidiaries. CORBA is a trademark or registered trademark of the Object Management Group, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks that may appear herein are the property of their respective owners.