August 9, 1999

For Immediate Release
Contact:


LYNX AND EMPRESS CHOSEN FOR FRENCH UTILITY UPGRADE

Electricité de France bases choice on performance, cost and reliability

Greenbelt, MD. -- Empress Software, Inc. and Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc. today announced they have been selected for a joint project by Electricité de France (EDF) to upgrade existing supervision and control system for hydro-electrical power production in the French power grid. The project, incorporating both the LynxOS® real-time operating system and the Empress RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), will provide a secure, flexible and precise management system for the utility.

The two companies beat out competing solutions from Oracle, Sybase, Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) and QNX for the contract on the basis of performance, cost, reliability and ease of installation. EDF produces more than 450 billion kilowatt hours for 13 million customers in France and abroad making it one of the world's leading power utility companies. Hydroelectric plants provide 13 percent of its production. Its existing management system runs on SCO/UNIX based PCs with flat memory files that could not provide the flexibility and real-time performance their new specifications required. The new system is a "black-box" solution for simple and cost-effective installation on a PC-based network that requires no administration. LynxOS provides for precise operations and management in real time while Empress RDBMS offers secure though flexible data management.

The new system allowed EDF to reduce installation time from 6 hours to 15 minutes with no loss of data and little necessity of shutdown. The network upgrade will be complete before the end of the year.

"We were impressed with the results from the combination of LynxOS and Empress RDBMS," said Georges Picq, Résponsable de L'Équipe MCO Hydraulique of EDF. "The two companies delivered a product with a small footprint with a remarkably robust performance and reliability suited to the needs of our application and resulted in significant improvements over our preceding system. We intend to consider Lynx and Empress for the next phase of the upgrade to be implemented in the next 2-3 years."

About Lynx Real-Time Systems

Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc. provides the foundation software for reliable and high-performance applications in telecommunications, data communications, avionics, automotive, office automation and process control systems. Lynx supplies embedded software products including scalable real-time operating systems, a software framework for high-availability systems, development tools and technical support worldwide. These products are based on such industry standards as POSIX, JAVA and CompactPCI to enable customers to leverage their investments in software and education. Lynx holds two patents for real-time software and has three patents pending. Founded in 1988, Lynx is a privately held company with offices in North America, Europe and Japan, with worldwide headquarters in San Jose, California. Information about Lynx Real-Time Systems is available on the World Wide Web at www.lynx.com.
About Empress
Empress Software, Inc. develops and supports the Empress Relational Database Management System. The Empress RDBMS is one of the most powerful and cost effective databases designed especially for embedded systems developers working with UNIX, Windows or real-time environments. Since 1979, Empress has been used successfully worldwide in many fields, including image and voice management, telecommunications, medical systems, telephony systems, multimedia applications, geographical information systems and network management.

For more information about Empress, please call 301-220-1919. Check our web site at www.empress.com or send e-mail to info@empress.com. You can write to us at Empress Software, 6401 Golden Triangle Drive, Greenbelt, MD, 20770. 


Empress Software Inc.                 Empress Software Inc.
3100 Steeles Ave East                 6401 Golden Triangle Drive
Markham, Ontario, Canada              Greenbelt, MD 20770, USA
Phone: (905) 513-8888                 Phone: (301) 220-1919
Fax:   (905) 513-1668                 Fax:   (301) 220-1997
http://www.empress.com/               http://www.empress.com/
sales@empress.com                     sales@empress.com

LynxOS is a registered trademark of Lynx Real-Time Systems, Inc. Other brand or product names are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective holders.