INDUSTRY

WALTHAM, MA -- IONA(R), a leading e-Business Platform provider for Web Services Integration (Nasdaq:IONA), today announced an alliance with SGI (NYSE:SGI), the world leader in advanced visualization, high-performance computing and complex data management. The alliance will ease a customer's incorporation of both vendors' offerings into their overall enterprise-computing environment. SGI provides an array of advanced visualization and high-performance computing systems from desktop workstations to the largest supercomputers aimed at solving creative and technical professionals computing needs in the energy, manufacturing, media, sciences and government and defense markets. IONA's Orbix E2A Web Services Integration Platform is the first solution built to handle critical business integration processes both inside and outside the firewall. Orbix E2A leverages Web services standards and service-oriented architectures to provide an open, flexible and low-cost integration solution. Under terms of today's alliance, IONA is providing optimized integration between Orbix E2A and SGI(R) systems. This integration will allow customers to more easily capture and utilize business logic and application components stored in disparate systems across their enterprise for use with SGI data management and visualization products, services and solutions. Many SGI customers and software partners utilize IONA's Orbix E2A Platforms. These organizations can now leverage shared technical support resources, and optimized integration between IONA and SGI to easily incorporate SGI offerings into their enterprise solutions. "Many of our customer and partner engagements involve massive integration projects, where our hardware, software and multi-media systems must be incorporated into some of the world's largest and most complex IT enterprises," said Knut Korsell, vice president of industry marketing at SGI. "We're partnering with IONA because Orbix E2A can address any integration requirement, and provide us with flexible alternatives to meet our customer's integration needs." "IONA and SGI provide the proven, reliable technology and top-notch professional services that customers rely on," said Bob Sandie, vice president of global alliances at IONA. "Both companies understand the importance of scalable and flexible solutions, and today's alliance will provide customers with a more complementary combination of IONA's development and integration solutions, and SGI hardware, software and multimedia technologies." In addition to optimized product integration, today's alliance provides for joint marketing and selling activities, and the sharing of technical and engineering resources to ensure seamless integration in customer engagements. For additional information visit www.iona.com or www.sgi.com.