Dassault Systèmes Wins International Award for Excellence in Strategic Alliance Management

Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals honors the efficiency, innovation, and success of DS’ many alliance programs

Paris, France, February 22, 2006 – Dassault Systèmes (DS) (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), a world leader in 3D and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions, announced today the company has won a Corporate Alliance Excellence Award in the global competition held annually by The Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (A.S.A.P). The Awards recognize and celebrate companies that have achieved dramatic success in their alliance programs through excellent management.

Dassault Systèmes has won the 2006 Alliance Program Excellence Award for the efficiency, innovation and success of its many and varied alliance programs, which together form an effective ecosystem around the DS brands. The ecosystem includes hundreds of partners in the fields of sales, services and support, IT technology, and software development, serving customers in manufacturing industries such as aerospace, automotive, shipbuilding, consumer goods and construction. One successful example is the Component Application Architecture (CAA V5) partner network, which today includes more than 100 partners, offering products that are fully integrated with the DS’ brands, thereby extending the scope of the DS solutions and saving customers both time and expense.

“Strategic partnerships are a cornerstone of our success,” said Francis Bernard, founder and advisor to the president, Dassault Systèmes. “We’ve made a long-term investment in creating an alliance program that enriches our customers and our partners. It’s a careful balance of giving our partners enough visibility to build their own reputations while at the same time presenting a unified face to our customers. DS doesn't look for alliances for the sake of partnering, but to deliver critical innovative solutions to our customers and incremental business for our ecosystem.”

A.S.A.P is the first global organization dedicated to promoting effective alliance program management, with a membership of multinational corporations including Dow Chemical, Accenture, Siemens, Fedex and GlaxoSmithKline. The Alliance Program Excellence Award recognizes companies that tightly link alliance management programs with corporate strategy through best practices at every level. It also considers alliance programs’ innovation, creativity, impact on their companies’ success, and willingness to share information.

Dassault Systèmes accepted the award for the company on February 14 at the A.S.A.P Summit Dinner in Atlanta, USA. This year’s other winners are British Telecom, Sprint, Cisco, HP and Microsoft.