IONA'S Artix Brings SOA to the Telecommunications Market; Artix Extensible ESB Delivers Multi-technology BSS/OSS Interoperability

IONA(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: IONA), a world leader inhigh-performance integration solutions for mission-critical ITenvironments, in response to market demand, announced today expandedArtix(TM) capabilities to support Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)adoption in the telecommunications industry. Artix, the company'sextensible Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), through its industry-leadingsupport of the standards, transports and protocols found throughoutthe typical telecommunications IT and network infrastructure, provideskey integration technology required for the telecommunicationsindustry to take advantage of SOA to drive new business initiatives.

"Success for telecommunications carriers in today's highlycompetitive market can be directly tied to the ability of their ITsystems to support new ways of doing business and new ways ofinteracting with their customers," said Sanjay Mewada, Vice President,Telecom Group Consulting and Research, Yankee Group. "More and morecarriers are turning to SOA as a way to introduce greater flexibilityto installed systems, and are looking for technologies that supportboth the existing and emerging standards driving the industry to helpthem reach their SOA goals."

Artix features a highly dynamic, configurable and extensibleplug-in architecture that specifically meets the SOA infrastructurerequirements of the telecommunications industry in the following ways:

-- Broad support for industry standards:

From CORBA to emerging standards such as Parlay andMulti-Technology Operations System Interface (MTOSI), Artix nativelysupports the key standards prevalent in carrier environments.Additionally, Artix can be easily extended to support new standards asthey gain acceptance and use in the industry.

-- Broad platform and protocol support:

Artix embraces the diversity found in most carrier environmentsand can be deployed in a distributed manner across multiple hardwareand software platforms, including mainframes, .NET and Java to nameonly a few. Artix also supports the numerous messaging transports,such as IIOP, JMS and MQSeries used in carriers' IT infrastructure.

-- Enterprise Qualities of Service:

Telecommunications carriers' environments must be highly reliableand scalable. Artix supports and extends the enterprise qualities ofservices, including high availability and fault tolerance, security,and management that ensure the greatest level of uptime possible forthese mission-critical systems.

"Heterogeneity is something we face everyday in our customers' ITenvironments," said Phil Healy, Head of Network IntelligenceEngineering at Marconi. "Carriers are beginning to see the value ofSOA as a means to derive new value from their installed systems andapplications. Existing standards such as CORBA, and emerging standardssuch as MTOSI and Parlay, help ensure that existing systems can drivenew ways of generating revenue. Through support of these importantstandards, we're confident that IONA's Artix can help us best meet theneeds of our customers as they incrementally adopt SOA in theirenterprises."

Intensified competition in the worldwide telecommunicationsindustry is driving carriers to introduce new, revenue-enhancingservices that not only support growth and retention in their customerbase, but also increase average revenue per user (ARPU). Many carriersare turning to value-added services delivered via broadband orwireless or offering newly bundled services. Artix has already proventhat it can support these initiatives and effectively extend existingstandards such as CORBA to integrate and extend the legacy BSS/OSS andnetwork management systems that have been deployed over the course ofmany years.

"Telecommunications carriers have long embraced a best-of-breedapproach when selecting and deploying the technology required todeliver services to their customers, which can lead to certainintegration challenges," explained Francesco Caruso, Senior ResearchScientist at Telcordia Technologies, Inc. "I see great value in theSOA integration technologies like ESB products. Support forestablished and emerging standards that drive our industry,specifically TMF's MTOSI and MTNM, will help ensure that telecomsoftware products can be easily deployed in any carriers' ITenvironment."

The inherently complex nature of carriers' IT environments,combined with an architectural approach that has traditionally focusedon point solutions as opposed to integration, have created ITinfrastructures that do not possess the flexibility required to easilyrespond to rapidly changing business requirements. In response,carriers are looking to emerging standards, such as MTOSI and Parlayto enable the deployment of Service Delivery Platforms (SDPs).

"Telecommunications carriers are quickly coming to realize that acomprehensive Service Delivery Platform is the crucial foundation forefficiently deploying and offering integrated voice, data, video andmobile services today's customers are demanding," said DarrellJordan-Smith, Vice President, Global Telecommunication, SunMicrosystems. "Artix offers compliance with standards such as Parlayand MTOSI. This promotes seamless integration of a carrier's SDP withthe variety of technologies and products found in the BSS/OSS layer,helping to ensure the success of new service initiatives."

In a carrier's environment, an SDP provides a standards-basedmediation layer that enables existing systems to support newinitiatives without requiring re-architecting of existingmission-critical systems. Through its broad support of the standards,platforms and protocols found in a typical service providerenvironment, Artix allows carriers to expose existing applications asservices that can then easily be woven into new business processes andapplications supported by the SDP.

"For more than a decade, IONA has distinguished itself byproviding powerful software used in the telecommunication market'smost demanding, mission-critical environments," said Peter Zotto, CEO,IONA. "With Artix, we applied our experience to deliver adifferentiated approach to integration for the telecommunicationsindustry. Any member of the telecommunications industry can achievestrategic advantage and business agility utilizing the SOA computingmodel enabled by IONA's award winning Artix."

To help illustrate the value of Artix to the telecommunicationsindustry, IONA is participating in the TM Forum Catalyst Program "AnyNetwork, One Interface" demonstration at the TeleManagement WorldDallas event, November 7-10, 2005. IONA, along with several othervendors will showcase how MTOSI can benefit carriers as they look tooffer converged services to their customers.

About IONA

For more than a decade, IONA(R) Technologies (NASDAQ: IONA) hasbeen a world leader in delivering high-performance integrationsolutions for Global 2000 IT environments. IONA pioneeredstandards-based integration with its CORBA-based Orbix(R) products.Artix(TM), IONA's extensible Enterprise Service Bus, enables existingenterprise systems to be integrated with an organization's commoninfrastructure components. IONA's sponsorship of the ObjectWeb Celtixopen source ESB is a natural extension of the company's history ofsolving integration problems by leveraging open standards anddistributed architectures.

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

IONA, IONA Technologies, the IONA logo, Orbix, High PerformanceIntegration, Artix, Mobile Orchestrator and Making Software WorkTogether are trademarks or registered trademarks of IONA TechnologiesPLC and/or its subsidiaries. CORBA is a trademark or registeredtrademark of the Object Management Group, Inc. in the United Statesand other countries. All other trademarks that may appear herein arethe property of their respective owners.