IONA Technologies, a world leader in high-performance integration solutions for mission-critical IT environments, and Satyam Computer Services Ltd. a leading global consulting and IT services company, have announced the two companies have entered into a wide-ranging technology, marketing and sales agreement.

In the initial stages of the partnership, IONA and Satyam will engage in joint sales and marketing activities with the intent of identifying projects where Web services-based integration can be used to bring together disparate systems and deliver powerful Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) deployments to its customers.

Satyam has identified Artix, IONA's extensible Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), as a robust ESB foundation to support some of the SOA projects for customers in its Enterprise Integration practice. The intention for both organizations is to broaden the scope of the relationship across various vertical markets such as banking and financial services, government, healthcare, insurance, and in particular, telecommunications.

"IONA has long been identified with the telecommunications industry and recognized for its ability to provide the integration technology required for companies in this market to effectively deliver new services to their customers," said Scott Devens, vice president, Strategic Alliances, IONA. "IONA has several customers in the telecommunications industry that are achieving tremendous economic and technical benefits from SOA as they adapt their infrastructures to deliver converged voice, data and other services.

This partnership combines IONA's proven technology with Satyam's consulting and deployment expertise to address the unique SOA needs of the telecommunications industry while broadening our approach to other industry segments." Moving to SOA, supported by Artix, would give Satyam customers an effective means to leverage the legacy systems running mission-critical operations in new ways to support emerging, customer-centric initiatives.

"Like Satyam, IONA has consistently demonstrated its ability to provide the right combination of technology and expertise to build composite applications and roll out new services in the most cost-effective and efficient manner possible," explained G. B. Prabhat, Director, Consulting and Enterprise Solutions, Satyam. "We believe that Artix will provide Satyam, and our customers, a powerful technology on which the SOA solutions required to remain competitive in an ever changing market, can be built."