Ucopia and Mandrakesoft to extend the boundaries of mobility

___ For Immediate Release ___

Ucopia and Mandrakesoft to extend the boundaries of mobility

Paris, November 3rd 2004 : Ucopia, Mandrakesoft and the University of
Paris' LIP6 research laboratory have just been granted a 1 million
euro research grant to collaborate in advanced mobility research. The
project, led by WiFi specialist Ucopia, aims at finding new ways of
enabling and managing mobility in IT.

The importance mobility has taken in today's information technologies
can hardly be overstressed. Laptops comprise an ever-growing part of
the desktop market-share and a new generation of WiFi-enabled portable
devices promises to flood the marketplace. Mobile devices are
extremely widely-spread, and more and more organizations rely on
wireless connectivity - the need for more advanced ways to leverage
and manage the possibilities open by Wi-Fi technologies is starting to
be felt. This is what GITAN is all about.

GITAN addresses three main areas of research : management, access, and
applications. The first area deals with defining and implementing a
model for mobility : namely, who can do what, where and how? Tools
that allow organizations to define and set up such a general structure
for mobility do not yet exist at this point. Access points today work
most often on a all-or-nothing basis : either users are allowed access
or they aren't, and if they are all services are accessible. GITAN
will allow fine-grained model definitions of the type : "all users of
category such-and-such are allowed access to Intranet services in
areas X and Y" - a kind of flexibility as yet impossible.

"The ever-growing importance of business mobility increases employees'
needs of being connected to business applications and services
anywhere and anytime" says Didier Plateau, CEO of Ucopia
Communications. "With solutions for mobility management, Ucopia
contributes to professional mobility development. IDC counts 75
million mobile professionals in Western Europe. The GITAN project will
satisfy these demands by developing solutions which answer business
mobility needs and requirements."

The second area is concerned with automatic discovery of services and
transparent access to them. WiFi access software can currently only
detect whole access points - for coherence with the  project's
approach to management, users need to know exactly what services are
available to them, and ideally access to those services should be
transparent. Mobility software developed within GITAN will let users
know, for example, that they have Intranet-only access in certain
areas and will permit smooth transition to an Internet-enabled zone -
without any need to reconfigure access settings. Mandrakesoft,
publisher of the Mandrakelinux Operating System, will be in charge of
implementing those features under Linux, and will integrate the
results in future version of its products.

"Mandrakesoft has done a lot in the direction of mobility recently,
with the release of products such as Move and GlobeTrotter. We've also
managed to strengthen our offer of services to corporate
organizations.", comments François Bancilhon, Mandrakesoft CEO, "GITAN
comes in the direct continuity of both efforts. It means our customers
can expect a lot of positive developments in terms of mobile
technologies, and it  also means we're are committed to continued R&D
investments." 

GITAN's third area of research involves new uses for WiFi technology :
Voice-Over-IP, Videoconferencing, and Web-conferencing. Although those
are all well-established features of regular networks, getting them to
work in an optimal way using WiFi connections is an area that is in
need of more research. LIP6, the University Pierre et Marie Curie's
Computer Science research laboratory, will be in charge of advancing
research in that field. GITAN chose to focus on those particular
technologies because their future as a staple of corporate mobility
can't be doubted - it is a natural extension of their current success
in the non-mobile world.

The research grant for GITAN was awarded by French agency ANVAR. The
total amount is ¤1.03 million. Ucopia will receive 32% of that amount,
and Mandrakesoft 37%. The project runs for a period of 24
months. Public release of the technology and software developed as
part of the contract is scheduled at the term of the period.


About Ucopia Communications

Ucopia Communications is the leading vendor of mobility management
solution. Ucopia offers solutions to users of wireless networks for
secure and trouble-free business mobility. The Ucopia solution enables
employees and visitors within an enterprise, a campus or an
administration to securely connect to a wireless network and
seamlessly access the Internet, Intranet, and Extranet applications
and services. Ucopia is a founder of the WLAN SmardCard consortium
which is a major new initiative established to define specifications
to enable the use of smart cards on Wireless LAN networks. Ucopia has
recently won the CIO trophy (CAPITAL IT) for its progressive
technology, responding directly to today's big business needs.


About Mandrakesoft

Mandrakesoft is the publisher of the popular Mandrakelinux operating
system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux systems
available. The company offers its enterprise, government and
educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and Open Source
software and related services. Mandrakesoft products are available in
more than 120 countries through dedicated channels and also from
Mandrakestore.com, the company's online store. Number 1 in several
countries, Mandrakesoft has won many awards for quality and technical
innovation. "Born on the Internet" in late 1998, Mandrakesoft has
offices in the United States and France. Mandrakesoft is traded on
Paris Euronext March Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters
code: MAKE.PA) and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

http://www.mandrakesoft.com

Press inquiries

Gaël Duval / Simon Barthelmé
press at mandrakesoft dot com 
http://www.mandrakesoft.com