Avanade Partners with Microsoft to Develop Library of Reusable Software Code to Speed...

SEATTLE -- Avanade(R) Inc., a leading technology integrator for Microsoft solutions, today announced its initiative with Microsoft to release Enterprise Library, a guidance library of reusable and extensible software assets for faster and easier development of applications in the .NET environment.

"Avanade's role with Microsoft in creating Enterprise Library underscores the proven, enterprise-tested assets Avanade provides based on extensive .NET engagements," said Eric Blankenburg, Vice President of Applications & Integration, Avanade. "Enterprise Library adds significant value to software architects by making it easy to follow Microsoft's recommended best practices for common enterprise development tasks."

Enterprise Library draws upon the best of the Avanade ACA.NET framework and Microsoft patterns and practices Application Blocks, creating a library of code from which developers can more quickly build applications in the .NET environment.

Enterprise Library is also designed for extensibility. A powerful illustration of this capability is Avanade's newest release of ACA.NET 4.0, planned for January 2005, which will be built on top of Enterprise Library. ACA.NET 4.0's extensions to Enterprise Library will provide a platform for service oriented architecture (SOA) and aspect oriented programming (AOP) development. In the past year, Avanade has been helping enterprise customers take advantage of SOAs with ACA.NET 3.1.

"Enterprise Library is the next generation of Microsoft's patterns & practices Application Blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges," said Michael Kropp, General Manager, Patterns & Practices, Microsoft. "Avanade's participation in Enterprise Library enables Microsoft to benefit from the insights gained through Avanade's .NET development experience and successful customer engagements using their ACA.NET asset."

Avanade brings a deep understanding of the importance of reusable architectures and the role they play in helping enterprise customers adopt the Microsoft .NET Framework. By collaborating with Microsoft on Enterprise Library, Avanade expects to accelerate .NET adoption and further align Avanade's ongoing investments in reusable architectures with Microsoft's architectural directions.

In the past three years, Avanade has completed more than 1,000 .NET customer engagements with Fortune 500 and mid-market customers, offering a cost-effective and efficient solution for customers to develop applications.

Customer Example: Fidelity National Financial

Fidelity Information Services (FIS), a division of Fidelity National Financial (NYSE:FNF), provides application software, information processing management, outsourcing services and professional IT consulting to the financial services and mortgage industries.

Fidelity Information Services' Empower! is a Loan Origination System suite of applications and tools that provides top mortgage lenders in the country the capability to customize the application to support their business processes. Originally built on the Delphi(R) software platform, Fidelity Information Services decided to migrate Empower! to a new architecture, and worked with Avanade and ACA.NET in 2003 to begin the process. Empower! for .NET (based upon a service oriented architecture) is a re-development of Empower! into the .NET environment using C# as the development language of choice.

With its close relationship with Avanade, Fidelity Information Services was part of the development community to provide Avanade and Microsoft input on the development of Enterprise Library.

"Avanade has been a valued IT partner, and ACA.NET is a central piece in the current version of Empower!," said David Spies, Senior Vice President and Chief Software Architect, Empower! Division, Fidelity Information Services. "As part of our deep working relationship with Avanade, we had the privilege of providing Avanade and Microsoft with input toward the development of Enterprise Library. We look forward to reviewing Enterprise Library in the coming weeks and evaluating its impact on our ongoing improvement to the Empower! application."

The goal of the .NET developed Empower! application was to improve flexibility by exposing functions in the form of services, automate processes, increase data exchange across the enterprise for efficient data delivery and shared infrastructure services, and lower the total cost of ownership.

Fidelity Information Services expects its future generation of Empower! to be developed using ACA.NET 4.0, which will be built on top of Enterprise Library.

As Enterprise Library incorporates many functions of ACA.NET along with Microsoft patterns and practices Application Blocks, companies will be able to take advantage of application development features similar to what Fidelity Information Services has experienced, using Avanade's ACA.NET 4.0 development framework.

About Fidelity National Financial

Fidelity National Financial, Inc., number 262 on the Fortune 500, is a provider of products and outsourced services and solutions to financial institutions and the real estate industry. The Company had total revenue of more than $7.7 billion and earned more than $860 million in 2003, with cash flow from operations of nearly $1.3 billion for that same period. FNF is a leading provider of information-based technology solutions and processing services to financial institutions and the mortgage and financial services industries through its subsidiary Fidelity Information Services, Inc. Fidelity Information Services' software processes nearly 50 percent of all U.S. residential mortgages, it has processing and technology relationships with 45 of the top 50 U.S. banks and has clients in more than 50 countries who rely on its processing and outsourcing products and services. Additionally, FNF is the nation's largest title insurance company and also provides other real estate-related services such as escrow, flood and tax certifications with life of loan monitoring, merged credit reporting, property valuations and appraisals, default management, relocation services, flood, homeowners and home warranty insurance, exchange intermediary services, mortgage loan aggregation and fulfillment, multiple listing services software, mortgage loan origination software, collateral scoring analytics and real property data. More information about the FNF family of companies can be found at www.fnf.com and www.fidelityinfoservices.com.

SOURCE: Fidelity National Financial, Inc. CONTACT: Daniel Kennedy Murphy, Senior Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations, 904-854-8120, dkmurphy@fnf.com; Darcy Patch, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Office of the Enterprise, 949-477-1173, darcy.patch@fnf.com

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About Avanade

Avanade is the leading technology integrator specializing in the Microsoft enterprise platform. Our people help customers around the world maximize their IT investment and create comprehensive solutions that drive business results. Additional information can be found at www.avanade.com.

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