Esterel Technologies and Altran announce Global Partnership for Embedded and Critical Systems and Software Development

Esterel Technologies and ALTRAN Partnership

Altran is now Esterel Technologies' only Global SCADE Certified Service Company Partner

Elancourt and Levallois-Perret, France and Bath, United Kingdom — February 10, 2011

Esterel Technologies, the leading worldwide provider of model-based development solutions for critical systems, and Altran, the European leader in innovation consulting and high technology, today announced a strategic global partnership. The partnership will offer a comprehensive critical systems and software development capability.

Altran's solution centres in the UK, France, Germany and Italy will create Esterel SCADE Suite and SCADE Display Competence Centers, which will enable them to offer critical embedded systems and software design, validation, verification, and integration services capabilities using Esterel Technologies market-leading SCADE Suite and SCADE Display products and expertise.

Altran brings its recognised global deployment capacity of very large teams. It will also apply its deep vertical domain knowledge in all critical industries, such as aerospace, defence, railways, automotive, and energy, as well as its own world-leading solution centre in embedded and critical systems, with its SPARK verification technology for high assurance software.

Key customer benefits of this association include

De-risking of development programmes
Cost reduction of systems and software development projects, in particular for demanding certification environments such as DO-178B or DEF STD 00-56 in aerospace and defence, EN 50128 in railways, IEC 61508 in the industry, IEC 60880 in the nuclear energy domain and ISO 26262 in automotive
Reuse of applications platforms across projects and geographies
Agility in development process, including rapid prototyping, fast specifications validation, extensive requirements traceability and production of certification artifacts
Unrivalled expertise in graphical user interface human factor analysis, GUI modelling and automated production

The partnership means that developers of both mission and safety-critical embedded control applications and critical embedded graphics displays will benefit from time savings and product quality improvements.

Esterel Technologies and Altran already share numerous customers in the mission-critical domains of aerospace, defence, space, rail, and industrial applications. Example applications include cockpit displays, weapon launch controls, landing controls, mission control, control station displays and computer-based train control.

For critical application developers, this strategic association dramatically shortens time-to-certification and deployment while ensuring product quality, said Eric Bantegnie, President and CEO of Esterel Technologies.

This global partnership, builds on the recent creation of Altran's worldwide solution practice for embedded and critical systems and enables Altran to deliver SCADE projects wherever our clients demand, said Keith Williams, Embedded & Critical Systems Executive Director of Altran.

The partnership will also include cooperation on critical systems technology strategy. Esterel Technologies has a long established relationship with Altran's solution centre in embedded and critical systems. Together they are working to integrate their respective technologies via a SCADE-to-SPARK code generator which will afford users the benefits of both technologies: model-driven development with the assurance of a secure programming language and associated verification tool suite.

About Esterel Technologies - An ISO 9001:2008 Certified Company

Esterel Technologies is the worldwide leader of model-based design, verification and code generation tools for critical system and software development.

Esterel Technologies is a privately held company with European headquarters in Elancourt, France, U.S. headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts and direct sales offices in Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, and China. Esterel is supported by channel and service partners worldwide.

For additional information, visit the Esterel Technologies website at www.esterel-technologies.com.

About Altran Group

Altran is the European leader in innovation consulting and high technology. The Group's 17,150 consultants, operating worldwide, cover the entire range of engineering specialties, including electronics, information technology, quality and organisation. They assist corporations throughout the innovation process, from technological monitoring, applied basic research and management consulting to industrial systems engineering and information systems, in most sectors, such as: automotive, aeronautics, space, telecommunications. Founded in 1982, Altran operates in 20 priority countries. In 2009, it generated a turnover of €1,403.7 million. www.altran.com

About Altran in UK ( Altran Praxis )

Altran Praxis is a specialist systems and software house, focussed 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, systems engineering and methods/tools (such as SPARK). Altran Praxis 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 the Altran Group - a global leader in innovation engineering, employing over 17,000 staff across the world. www.altran-praxis.com