PARIS and SAN JOSE, Calif. – April 3, 2007 – Embedded Systems Conference – AdaCore today announced a global licensing agreement with world-leading missile systems company MBDA. The three-year agreement builds on MBDA’s existing long-term commitment to the Ada programming language by adopting AdaCore’s GNAT Pro development environment as its corporate Ada standard. The initial agreement covers 80 developers, and enables MBDA to add additional licences as needed to flexibly and cost-effectively meet its changing needs.
A key reason why MBDA chose AdaCore and GNAT Pro was the wide variety of platforms it supports, including native hosts, such as Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris and GNU/Linux. GNAT Pro also supports embedded targets for bare board PowerPC and all WindRiver VxWorks platforms. The license covers Ada, C and add-on requirements for eight native and cross platforms. The agreement also allows MBDA to benefit from major cost efficiencies in terms of training, code portability and support.
MBDA is already using AdaCore products on a number of its high reliability and mission-critical projects. These include the Meteor Beyond Visual Range Air-to-Air Missile (BVRAAM), JERNAS ground-based defense system and the Principal Anti-Air Missile System (PAAMS). The Ada language enables MBDA to create maintainable, safety-related code for its products.
“Ada is becoming the de facto standard for developers of reliable, efficient and high integrity safety-related applications,” said Franco Gasperoni, Managing Director, AdaCore. “This global contract demonstrates our leadership in the market and provides MBDA with flexible access to our software and support, enabling the company to leverage its investment in Ada across the widest range of development platforms.”
About Ada / GNAT Pro
Ada is a modern, 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.
AdaCore has been closely involved with the Ada language since its inception. Its GNAT Pro development environment combines market-leading technology, including Ada 2005, the latest version of the language, with an expert support system to provide a natural solution for organizations creating efficient and reliable code.
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 the widely used GCC technology and is backed by rapid and expert support service.
About MBDA
With an annual turnover exceeding €3 billion, a forward order book of over €13 billion and over 70 customers around the world, MBDA is one of the world’s leading missile systems companies. MBDA currently has 45 operational programs for missile systems and countermeasures, and has proven its leadership in the management of large multinational projects. MBDA is jointly owned by BAE SYSTEMS (37.5%), EADS (37.5%) and FINMECCANICA (25%).
About AdaCore
Founded in 1994, AdaCore is the leading provider of commercial software solutions for Ada, a modern programming language designed for large, long-lived applications where reliability, efficiency and safety are critical. AdaCore’s flagship product is GNAT Pro, 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/home/company/customers/ for more information.
Use of Ada and GNAT Pro continues to grow, especially 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
