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Technology Stocks : Iona (IONA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dustin Schieber who wrote (310)	4/2/1998 4:51:00 AM
From: formula1	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 491

From today's Irish independant Iona's "apple pie" formula that's a real winner. Business partnerships are a bit like motherhood and apple pie. Everybody agrees they are a good thing, but not everybody knows how to do them well. Not surprisingly for a company which claims its mission is "making software work together", Iona Technologies sees its development in terms of a series of partnerships it has developed since it was founded in 1991. The former campus company - which made headlines when its founders became multii-millionaires after floating on the US Nasdaq stock market last year - traces its origins back to a partnership with Esprit, the European Community's technology support programme. Esprit backed Iona founders Chris Horn, Annrai O'Toole and Sean Baker when they were academics still working within the confines of Trinity College, Dublin. The programme funded about six engineers for 2 1/2 years. DIFFERENT LANGUAGES Iona's Orbix products have since become a hit with users who want to make software systems written in different languages talk together in a meaningful way. Executive vice president Sean Baker explains: "We make software work together at the programming level. It is a tool for programmers who need to knit together different systems". These days, Iona Technologies is entering into partnerships with some of the biggest names in computing. Last month, for instance, it celebrated St. Patrick's Day in Boston with the announcement of two strategic partnerships with Hewlett-Packard and NEC Corporation. "We don't want to be a rival of any software approach - instead we are the interworking layer," Baker says. Conor Halpin, vice president in charge of strategic alliances at Iona, points out that " partnership is very tricky". It represents a huge investment of resources and he warns that it will only work if "you understand what your proposition is vis-a vis your partners". Put simply, there has to be something for all parties to the partnership. "Selling a big licence to a company is not a partnership .... we could never let a company take our product and sell it under its name", says Baker. Under the terms of the deal with Hewlett Packard, for instance, HP will use Iona's Orbix range of products throughout HP in the development and deployment of solutions for HP's customer base. As a result HP and Iona will be able to provide customers with software that is adaptable and integrates into their existing systems. HP's enterprise products will be able to use the Orbix range of products, while Iona will deliver professional services training and consulting to HP and to its customers worldwide. Iona also recently announced a strategic partnership with NEC for the manufacture, distribution and provision of technical support for Iona's Orbix products. It it through these strategic partnerships that Iona keeps the Orbix name alive in the eye of users. The company is even toying with the idea of branding systems that depend on Orbix with an "Orbix Inside" tag much as Intel has done for its chips which might ortherwise go unnoticed by the customer. Developing saleable technology is not only about making good products, however, it is also about making something that as many customers as possible want or need to use. For this reason, Iona has made a pont of working in partnership with the people who set industry standards in computing. Iona;s Orbix products conform with the international CORBA standard (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) to such and extent that the two words have become almost interchangeable among technology experts, Baker claims. ENHANCEMENTS Baker likes to think that Orbix will become a byword for the CORBA standard much as biro is a byword for the ball-point pen and hoover for the vacuum cleaner. Baker adds that Iona early on recognised the benefits for what he terms "coopetition". Besides co-operating on standards committee, Iona also decided not to criticise its competitors in public. Iona recognised early on that it needed to get investment and support from a major backer. It formed an alliance with SunSoft, which took a 25pc stake in the company in 1993. Sun sold its stake when Iona floated last year. Iona has also sought to engage in partnership with its customers who include leading finacial institutions, manufacturers and telecommunication companies. For instance, Motorola bought its products when Iona employed only a dozen people, while Boeing has part-funded some enhancements to Iona products. Other clients who co-operated in product development include BellSouth, Iona Technologies, which was floated on US Nasdaq market last year, currently has a stock market value of $600m. Last December, it also obtained a listing in Dublin.