NEW YORK, January 23, 2006 – International electronics and systems group, Thales, has announced a global software licensing agreement with AdaCore. This will provide flexible, cost-effective access to AdaCore’s GNAT Pro development environment for developers across the six businesses in the worldwide Thales Group and its subcontractors.
The three-year corporate license covers a minimum of 250 Thales developers, with additional licenses available to be added flexibly in packs of five by both Thales Group companies and their subcontractors. The agreement means that Thales will adopt GNAT Pro as a corporate standard.
The Ada programming language is designed specifically for large, long-lived applications where reliability, efficiency and safety are vital. The latest version of the language, Ada 2005, was ratified earlier this year. AdaCore has been closely involved with the Ada language since its inception and its GNAT Pro development environment combines market-leading technology, including Ada 2005, with an expert support system to provide a natural solution where efficient and reliable code is critical.
Close to 300 Thales developers are currently using AdaCore around the globe. Projects using Ada cover all of Thales’ markets, including naval, air systems, aerospace and land systems. They range from the ARH Tiger Helicopter Simulator (France/Australia), Thales Raytheon Systems Air Command and Control System (USA), avionics systems for the Airbus A400M (France), and the Combat Management System for the French Navy.
“The advent of Ada 2005 further strengthens the already impressive capabilities of the Ada language for mission-critical defense and avionics projects,” said Jean-Michel Tanneau, Thales Group. “Given our use of Ada our new agreement with AdaCore is ideal, providing us with cost-effective and flexible access to the leading Ada development environment for our staff across the world.”
“Thales Group’s global adoption of AdaCore demonstrates our leadership in the market and the growing use of Ada within complex and safety-critical projects,” commented Franco Gasperoni, managing director, AdaCore. “Our innovative licensing arrangement provides Thales and its subcontractors with the flexibility to access our tools and support simply and efficiently while benefiting from volume pricing.”
At the heart of GNAT Pro is a full-featured, multi-language (Ada, C, C++) development environment complete with libraries, bindings and a range of supplementary tools. 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 GCC technology and is backed by rapid and expert support service.
About Thales
Thales is an international electronics and systems group serving defense, aerospace, security and services markets worldwide. The Group employs 60,000 people throughout the world and generated revenues of 10.3 billion euros in 2004.
About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial, open-source software solutions for Ada, a modern programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where reliability, efficiency and safety are absolutely critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is GNAT Pro, the commercial-grade open-source Ada development environment, which comes with expert online support and is available on more platforms than any other Ada technology. AdaCore has customers worldwide; see www.adacore.com/customers.php for more information.
Use of Ada and GNAT Pro continues to grow in high-integrity and safety-critical applications, including commercial and defense aircraft avionics, air traffic control, railroad systems, financial services and medical devices. AdaCore has North American headquarters in New York and European headquarters in Paris. www.adacore.com