IONA to Discuss the Future of Web Services Integration at Software Development Expo West; IONA CTO Eric Newcomer to Deliver Presentation on Integration Technology for the 21st Century.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SD West 2003

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 25, 2003

IONA(R), the leading provider of Rapid Integration software (NASDAQ: IONA), today announced that Chief Technology Officer Eric Newcomer will be presenting a session at the Software Development Conference and Exposition to be held this week in Santa Clara, Calif. at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The presentation, titled, "Web Services: Integration Technology for the 21st Century" will be held on Wednesday, March 26 at 3:30 p.m. PST as part of the conference's Web services track.

This session will present a historical perspective on application integration, the emergence of standards, and how the convergence of these is leading to Web services as the integration technology of choice for the 21st Century. As software and technology has evolved, organizations have continued to build out their application infrastructure, adding new functionality first and worrying how to make it work with the rest of their applications second. Consequently, the economic model for business collaboration and application integration is broken -- costing organizations in excess of $150 billion annually. Web services will change this model and approach forever, and promises to save the Global 2000 alone close to $10 billion annually in business collaboration and application integration costs.

"The development of services-oriented, standards-based integration based on Web services will be the key to the future success of corporate IT," said Eric Newcomer, CTO, IONA Technologies. "Without the development and implementation of these independent technologies, companies installing application infrastructure will continue to struggle in their effort to make their systems interoperable and reusable. Organizations such as the W3C, Oasis, and WS-I are working hard to develop a common architecture and infrastructure definition, making widespread Web services a reality that is just around the corner."

About IONA

IONA is the leading provider of Rapid Integration software with more than 4,500 customers worldwide. IONA's award-winning Rapid Integration software products are built on: service-oriented architectures that increase reuse of software assets to deliver lasting results, standards-based software that enables vendor independence, and incremental deployment capabilities that lower the customer's risk.

Founded in 1991, IONA(R) (NASDAQ: 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.

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