Leading Vehicle Supplier KAB Seating Builds IT Strategy On Microsoft and SMARTEAM Technologies

Microsoft and SMARTEAM to showcase scalable, end-to-end business management solutions at ECF, October 12-14 in Paris

REDMOND, Wash., and KFAR SABA, Israel — Oct. 13, 2004 — Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) and SmarTeam Corporation Ltd., a Dassault Systèmes company (Nasdaq: DASTY; Euronext Paris: #13065, DSY.PA), today announced plans by KAB Seating Ltd. of the United Kingdom to extend its SMARTEAM Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solution, based on Microsoft® technologies, to interoperate with the Microsoft Business Solutions–Axapta® enterprise resource planning (ERP) product, one of Microsoft’s business application suites. The mobile machinery and automotive supplier’s use of SMARTEAM enterprise PLM and Microsoft technologies will be showcased at ECF, Oct. 12-14, in Paris.

KAB Seating, a leading global tier-one supplier of performance seating for off-road vehicles to major international original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), is a long-standing customer of SMARTEAM PLM, built on Microsoft SQL Server™, and uses Microsoft technology as its corporate platform. KAB plans to merge its PLM, ERP and supplier processes across the extended enterprise, maximizing its competitive advantage while reducing costs and business risk.

“We have deployed SMARTEAM PLM widely, managing all our engineering data across product development, sales and throughout our organization,” said Dave Farrar, manufacturing systems manager at KAB. “On top of our SMARTEAM success, it was only natural for us to turn to Microsoft Axapta as we extend our IT strategy into manufacturing.” A pilot project conducted by KAB proved strong technological compatibility between the two systems.

SmarTeam is a longtime leader in leveraging Microsoft technology, building its enterprise solutions on Microsoft .NET technologies — including Windows Server™ 2003, SQL Server, BizTalk® Server and Active Directory® directory service — to provide high availability, scalability, performance, enhanced security and support for open standards. Integrating with key Microsoft productivity products — including Microsoft Office, Project and SharePoint® Portal Server — SMARTEAM delivers rapidly customizable solutions that address today’s strategic manufacturing needs.

“Microsoft technology is positioned to become the standard across the manufacturing industry,” said Charles Johnson, worldwide managing director of manufacturing industry solutions at Microsoft. “By recognizing the need to unlock data trapped in disparate systems, SmarTeam has built on Microsoft’s integrated platform to provide manufacturing customers with powerful PLM solutions that optimize and automate processes while improving communication and collaboration across the enterprise.”

“SmarTeam embraced Microsoft’s technology and strategic vision long before PLM became a household term, driving mainstream PLM adoption by providing highly scalable solutions that are easy to implement and use,” said Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO, SmarTeam. “KAB’s expanding use of SMARTEAM PLM and Microsoft Axapta is an excellent example of how this technology bond brings exceptional solutions value to the manufacturing community.”

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