Icebreaker Communications, Inc. Newest Member to Join CENSA–

19 Companies Join Global Science Association in Less Than Two Years

--CENSA developing science's newest, most advanced tools–Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems--

Medford, MA October 7, 1998--Rich Lysakowski, Ph.D., Executive Director of CENSA (the Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association), Medford, MA announced, today, that Icebreaker Communications, Inc., Newton, MA has joined CENSA as a leading Supplier Member.

CENSA–an international scientific, software, and high-technology, trade association–is comprised of the world's largest research and development organizations in the life sciences, chemical sciences, consumer products, healthcare, high technology, and related industries. Its major market development programs are developing future generations of automation systems for technical and scientific applications, Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems (CENS) and Intelligent Project Support Environments (IPSE).

Icebreaker Communications, Inc. develops and markets desktop software that enables manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and chemical companies to develop shared Smart Notebooks using standard personal computers, existing networks, and the Internet. Icebreaker's Smart Notebook (also referred to as a virtual technical notebook) is used to package a variety of end-user information such as ad-hoc engineering notes and conclusions, development processes, 3D data, documents, spreadsheets, relational database information, e-mails, FEMAs, quality data, etc. into a single coordinated electronic notebook for use in project management and enterprise-wide communications.

Icebreaker Communications, Inc. becomes CENSA's 19th member company–in less than two years–joining leading chemical, pharmaceutical and high technology companies including Procter & Gamble Company, Pfizer, Inc., Adobe Systems Incorporated, Dow Chemical Company, Rohm and Haas Company, Documentum, Inc., GlaxoWellcome, Inc., PSSoftware Solutions Ltd., Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, Doxis, Inc., Purdue Pharma L.P., Scrip-Safe Security Products, Inc. and others.

Deemed critical by scientists worldwide—and seen as digital replacements to today's ubiquitous but obsolete paper recordbooks—Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems—facilitate and accelerate R&D projects among the world's scientists by speeding the capture, use, transfer, and archiving of critical and proprietary research data and records. These benefits are critical to corporations involved in biology, chemistry, materials, and high-tech R & D.

"CENSA's goal is to accelerate evolution of markets for the complete, functional, electronic equivalent of paper recordkeeping systems including legal defensibility, regulatory compliance, ease of use, convenience, portability, and more." said Dr. Lysakowski. "To meet legal and regulatory needs, we are detailing and implementing recordkeeping procedures for legally-defensible, permanent electronic records."

"The big technical challenge," Dr Lysakowski said, "is integrating hundreds of scientific client-server software applications that change continually. CENSA's component-based reference architecture and integration frameworks will help to solve these technical problems. Defacto standards such as Microsoft's ActiveX/DCOM, Sun's JavaBeans, and OMG's CORBA are our starting point. Icebreaker and other supplier members are following CENSA's lead in the specification process. We welcome Icebreaker in advancing our common objectives."

Edward Wagner, Icebreaker Communications, Inc. Executive Vice President said, "Icebreaker provides a new electronic notebook to companies that need to collect, organize, and communicate their intellectual property and knowledge. CENSA provides a wealth of information from members on the requirements for electronic notebooks and integrated project support environments, and can help Icebreaker define the functionality to meet specific and global needs for its customers. Ultimately, we will provide context-specific, end-user applications to these members to give them a competitive advantage and meet their electronic notebook initiatives."

CENSA Supplier Members, including Icebreaker Communications, gain many benefits including: priority access to end user members and their development projects; extensive technical and marketing knowledge, research reports and much more. CENSA is working closely with Supplier Members to build complete, mission-critical collaborative electronic lab notebooks, that include components for chemistry, biology, and engineering applications.

According to Dr. Lysakowski, "CENSA End User Members will release detailed specifications, RFPs, and software for systems, integration frameworks, applications, and components for technical applications to its end user and supplier members in advance of their general availability to the market. These things are being designed to meet the requirements of automation managers, regulatory affairs, R&D managers, scientists and engineers, patent attorneys, records managers, and quality assurance managers. These professionals will benefit greatly from systems for intelligent project data, document, and record handling, permanent archiving, collaboration, and knowledge management."

According to Icebreaker's Wagner, "CENSA provides us two major benefits: access to new markets for Icebreaker in a managed setting and shorter time-to-market for Icebreaker by rapidly defining the gap between our product and the specific functionality to meet the needs of CENSA's members. By reducing the time and cost to find new customers for Icebreaker, CENSA helps us understand and penetrate emerging markets for our products faster. This will greatly reduce our cost of sales and better align the expectations of the users with the capabilities of our system."

CENSA represents over 40,000 R&D scientists and over 500,000 employees working in the pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology, healthcare, software, high technology, and related industries internationally where government regulations and patents are fundamental to business operations.

For more information contact: Dr. Rich Lysakowski, Executive Director, The Collaborative Electronic Notebook Systems Association, Inc., 19 Bowen Avenue, Suite 100, Medford, MA 02155 USA, Tel: (781) 395-3004, Internet:

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