Iona concludes licensing deal with Microsoft

Iona Technologies, the Nasdaq-quoted Irish software company, yesterday announced the completion of a licensing deal with the …

Iona Technologies, the Nasdaq-quoted Irish software company, yesterday announced the completion of a licensing deal with the leading personal computer software company, Microsoft, which will see it increase the application of its software integrating system.

Iona paid a $10,000 fee for the licence which will allow the company to market Microsoft's software integrating solution, Component Object Model (COM), and Iona's Orbix solution together to software developers. "Our customers are are not interested in religious wars or incompatibilities," said Mr Annrai O'Toole, chief technical officer at Iona.

He said the deal signified a new level of inter-operability between the two solutions, known as OrbixCOMet, which would contribute to Iona's growth. "This is good news to our investors and out stockbrokers," he said.

As a Microsoft product, COM is only compatible with Windows. The agreement to licence COM means that COM-CORBA, the first product in Iona's new OrbixCOMet range, will support platforms such as Windows, NT and Sun Solaris. OrbixCOMet Desktop allows Visual Basic, Delphi and PowerBuilder users to extend their applications using COM and CORBA.