Sun Microsystems And IONA Enable Extensible ESB For Solaris 10.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., DUBLIN, Ireland and WALTHAM, Mass. -- Technology and Marketing Agreement Promotes High Performance Integration Solutions for Mission-critical IT Environments

Sun Microsystems, Inc. and IONA(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: IONA), a world leader in high-performance integration solutions for mission-critical IT environments, today announced a broad technology and marketing agreement between the two companies. Under this new agreement, Artix(TM), IONA's extensible Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), will be available for the Solaris(TM) 10 Operating System (OS) for all supported platforms. Additionally, the two companies plan to enhance interoperability between Artix and the Sun Java(TM) Enterprise System (Java ES), and participate in joint sales and marketing efforts.

"Sun and IONA are committed to helping companies maximize the return on their diverse IT investments and harness the benefits of modern computing architectures like SOA," explained Peter Zotto, CEO, IONA. "Similar to Sun, we provide extremely performant, standards-based solutions. IONA is pleased to play an important role in the adoption of the Sun Java Enterprise System and Solaris10 and will continue contributing to the Sun Java Business Integration specification. Our relationship with Sun is a valuable and natural progression of our leadership in integration solutions."

Sun and IONA have a long tradition of collaborating to solve the challenges associated with enterprise computing, and bringing to market proven solutions that support the IT environments essential to their customers' business success. In both Artix and Solaris 10 OS, organizations can take advantage of robust and innovative technology that delivers the high performance and availability required for mission-critical computing, while at the same time reducing the overall cost and complexity of their IT environments.

As companies move their web services and SOA initiatives from limited, controlled environments into the enterprise, their efforts can be enhanced by making sure their selected technologies support the Qualities of Service (QoS) required for large-scale, distributed systems and applications. Organizations that have adopted a common infrastructure, like that of Solaris 10 OS and the Sun Java Enterprise System, must also be confident that legacy systems can be incorporated easily while maintaining performance and scalability. Artix is recognized for its ability to accomplish this for businesses across the world and has performed well in performance and scalability testing in Sun's Tunathon program.

"Sun's technology and expertise is trusted by many of the world's leading companies and as such, is the platform of choice to support their strategic, enterprise computing initiatives, including those based on Java, web services and SOA," said Stephen Borcich, Vice President of Partner Marketing for Sun Microsystems. "IONA has been long associated with providing enterprise-class integration solutions and in Artix, we see a technology that continues this tradition."

To that end, interoperability across the enterprise is a critical issue being addressed by the development of the Java Business Integration specification (JSR 208). IONA is an important contributor to the JSR 208 community and will assist in promoting its adoption with customers. Java Business Integration will standardize integration and provide the foundation for SOA by providing an open extensible platform to build integration/SOA solutions and by providing a definition for a single document that defines the services that make up an SOA "application." Java Business Integration also gives customers higher levels of flexibility, choice, and extensibility and will lead to more robust integration solutions with reduced vendor lock-in and lower costs.

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 existing enterprise systems to be integrated with an organization's common infrastructure components.

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.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Since its inception in 1982, a singular vision - "The Network is the Computer" - has propelled Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) to its position as a leading provider of industrial-strength hardware, software and services that make the Net work. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the World Wide Web at http://sun.com.

IONA, IONA Technologies, the IONA logo, Orbix, High Performance Integration, Artix, Mobile Orchestrator 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

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Solaris, Java, and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. SPARC is a trademark or registered trademark of SPARC International, Inc. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Products bearing SPARC trademarks are based upon an architecture developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.