MBDA Extends Global Software Licensing Agreement with AdaCore

Leading missile company adopts SPARK Pro and AdaCore’s GNAT Pro development environments as corporate standard

PARIS, NEW YORK and BATH, England – April 13, 2010 – AdaCore today announced a new global licensing agreement with world-leading missile systems company MBDA. The three-year agreement will see the MBDA Group of companies extend its existing contract with AdaCore to now include the SPARK Pro high assurance software development toolset, as well as the GNAT Pro development environment.

The combined contract, which covers 80 developers, will enable MBDA to benefit from a single access point for all software and support queries, as well as the advantages of using a single development platform that spans the tightly integrated SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro.

This builds on MBDA’s existing long-term commitment to the Ada programming language and use of SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro as corporate standards. MBDA is already using the toolsets on its mission-critical missile systems.

“Successfully developing reliable, high integrity software is critical to MBDA’s world-leading portfolio of products,” said Colin McDonald, Software Performance Evaluation Manager, MBDA. “The Ada language is the perfect fit for our global needs as it delivers unsurpassed safety and reliability. The combination of GNAT Pro and SPARK Pro provides a complete solution across the entire development process, backed up by comprehensive support for our projects.”

“Global, long-term contracts such as this one give us the opportunity to associate major customers with our technology roadmap,” said Cyrille Comar, Managing Director, AdaCore. “The combination of GNAT Pro and SPARK Pro provides an integrated solution to the development and verification of the most critical parts of high integrity systems. MBDA’s input and feedback on the evolution of this solution allows us to stay focused on the needs and trends of the industry we serve.”

MBDA chose AdaCore and GNAT Pro due to the wide variety of platforms they support, including native hosts, such as Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris and GNU/Linux. The contract covers GNAT Pro, SPARK Pro and the SPARK Pro Black Belt edition, which features support for concurrent programming and integral proof checker.

“This extended licensing agreement with MBDA demonstrates the major benefits of our close working relationship with AdaCore and the advantages it brings to our global customer base,” said Keith Williams, Altran Praxis Managing Director. “It shows that for the creation of innovative, high integrity systems, the combination of SPARK Pro and GNAT Pro is the natural choice.”

Ada is a state-of-the-art, internationally standardized language that has proven its value for developing large, long-lived applications where safety and reliability are essential. It has consequently become a leading language in commercial and military avionics, air traffic control, high-speed rail systems and nuclear power systems.

SPARK Pro was created by Altran Praxis, the international specialist in critical systems engineering and safety assurance, and AdaCore, the leading provider of commercial software solutions for the Ada language. SPARK provides the foremost language, toolset and design discipline for the engineering of high-assurance software. It combines Praxis’ renowned SPARK language and verification tools, with the GNAT Programming Studio (GPS) and GNATbench development environments from AdaCore. Frontline support is provided through GNAT Tracker, AdaCore’s web-based support system.

At the heart of AdaCore’s GNAT Pro is a full-featured, multi-language (Ada, C, C++) development environment complete with libraries, bindings generators and a range of supplementary tools, including code coverage, code metrics, documentation generator and code standard checker. All its technology combines the flexibility and freedom associated with open source development and the assurance that comes from knowing that all tools go through a rigorous quality assurance process. It is based on the widely used GCC technology and is backed by rapid and expert support service.

About MBDA
With industrial facilities in four European countries and within the USA, MBDA has an annual turnover of €2.7 billion and an order book of €11.9 billion. With more than 90 armed forces customers in the world, MBDA is a world leader in missiles and missile systems.

MBDA is the only group capable of designing and producing missiles and missile systems that correspond to the full range of current and future operational needs of the three armed forces (land, sea and air). In total, the group offers a range of 45 missile systems and countermeasures products already in operational service and more than 15 others currently in development.

MBDA is jointly held by BAE SYSTEMS (37.5%), EADS (37.5%) and FINMECCANICA (25%). www.mbda-systems.com

About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a state-of-the-art programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where safety, security, and reliability are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is the GNAT Pro development environment, which comes with expert on-line support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has an extensive world-wide customer base; see http://www.adacore.com/home/company/customers/ for further information.

Ada and GNAT Pro see a growing usage in high-integrity and safety-certified applications, including commercial aircraft avionics, military systems, air traffic management/control, railroad systems, and medical devices, and in security-sensitive domains such as financial services.

AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com

About Altran Praxis
Altran Praxis is a specialist systems and software house, focused on the engineering of systems with demanding safety, security or innovation requirements. Altran Praxis leads the world in specific areas of advanced systems engineering and innovation such as: ultra low defect software engineering, Human Machine Interface (HMI), safety engineering for complex or novel systems and tools (such as SPARK) /methods for systems engineering. It offers clients a range of services including turnkey systems development, consultancy, training and R&D. Key market sectors are aerospace and defence, rail, nuclear, air traffic management, automotive, medical and security. The company operates globally with active projects in the US, Asia and Europe. The headquarters of Altran Praxis are in Bath (UK) with offices in Sophia Antipolis, London, Paris, Loughborough and Bangalore. Altran Praxis is an expertise centre within, and wholly owned by, Altran which is a global leader in innovation engineering and employs 17,000 staff across the world. www.altran-praxis.com

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