Mitsui Knowledge selects MKS Integrity for Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and Strategic Partnership

Waterloo, ON—September 29, 2006: MKS Inc. (TSX:MKX) today announced that Mitsui Knowledge Industries Kabushiki Kaisha (Mitsui) has selected MKS Integrity for application lifecycle management (ALM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) process control and metrics. Also announced today, Mitsui and MKS have established a strategic partnership where Mitsui will provide its customers in the Japanese market with ALM solutions based on MKS Integrity, and supply consulting, implementation and customer support in Japan for MKS Integrity.

Mitsui’s initial implementation will enable Mitsui to automate its project and quality control processes into MKS Integrity, and run a project end to end from requirements gathering through design, development, test and release, enforcing process adherence and ensuring that all documents and approvals are in place as the work moves across the application lifecycle. MKS Integrity enables Mitsui to coordinate project work across multiple locations in Japan and China, enabling Mitsui to leverage best value skills, without risking control or quality.

MKS Integrity provides control and access to work for each project role and team member, collecting time spent on each project task in a non intrusive manner. MKS Integrity provides accurate and timely metrics for management and auditors. In addition to improved team productivity and application quality, this visibility and traceability enable management to control quality, cost and schedule and also confirm adherence to process.

Based on this real world experience with MKS Integrity, Mitsui as an MKS strategic partner will provide advice and consulting to large Japanese organizations on how to use MKS Integrity to increase quality, productivity and control through automation of ALM and ITSM processes. By electronically consolidating ALM and ITSM activities and operations, organizations can maintain control and visibility while choosing the optimal balance of insourcing/outsourcing, locations, subcontractors, technical platforms (distributed / host), custom software and package software (such as SAP).

“MKS’s success with tier 1 organizations in US and Europe, together with the fact that experienced MKS staff are now part of our team in Japan, positions Mitsui to bring world’s best practice ALM, application portfolio management (APM), ITIL and compliance solutions to our Japanese customers,” says Mitsui Executive Director, Tetsuo Kawashima. “As a single-architecture enterprise ALM solution, MKS Integrity can be applied to all areas of a large organization’s application development and IT operations, enabling process and documentation control, traceability and visibility. MKS Integrity supports custom software (distributed and host applications), package software (SAP) and connects operations and the application lifecycle through ITIL processes (ITIL).”

Kawashima adds “With M&A and the need for application rationalization continuing in Japan, organizations are looking to manage diversity and to gradually and securely evolve towards a target set of business applications and infrastructure. Using MKS Integrity to coordinate distributed (Unix, Java, .Net) and host (zSeries and iSeries) development enables transformation towards service oriented architectures (SOA). This management support will be a key benefit to organizations such as financial institutions who are providing services to customers based on combinations of these platforms.”

“Mitsui approach the IT challenges facing large organizations from the perspective of improved process control, visibility and traceability. MKS insists that its partners for Japan understand that focus and investment in these areas will increase productivity, quality, speed to market and customer satisfaction, and that by addressing these challenges the underlying data required for audit and regulatory compliance is made available. Mitsui is such a partner,” says David Jones, Managing Director, MKS Asia Pacific.

About Mitsui Knowledge Industries
Mitsui Knowledge Industry Co., Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is an information technology (IT) company. Its Information Service segment is involved in the provision of system consulting services, the development of software, the maintenance and application of systems, the Internet Data Center/Application Service Provider (IDA/ASP) business, the IT solutions business, as well as the provision of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) based packaged software. It is also engaged in the provision of investigation and research services, consulting services and other information processing services. The investigation and research services cover areas such as economics, finance, environment and information, among others. Mitsui Knowledge Industry has three subsidiaries and three associated companies.

About MKS
MKS is the premier provider of application lifecycle management solutions for the global 1000. MKS’s flagship ALM solution, MKS Integrity, is the most highly integrated ALM platform in the industry today, spanning all aspects of the software development lifecycle and supporting critical business transformations including SOA, application rationalization and outsourcing. MKS Integrity’s single architecture drives high levels of user productivity, facilitates rapid deployment and process standardization while delivering a complete view of application development activity through real time metrics, trends and reporting. MKS Integrity also provides essential support for IT operations through software deployment and issue management. Founded in 1984, MKS serves more than 10,000 customers in countries across the world. Whether through deployment of MKS’s solution strategically on an enterprise scale, or by leveraging individual components to solve project-level challenges, our customers can use MKS’s software to enable higher levels of process maturity, better manage global development activity and safeguard their most critical business applications and software assets. More information about MKS can be found at http://www.mks.com or by calling 1-800-265-2797 (US & Canada), +49-711-351775-0 (Germany), +44-1483-733900 (United Kingdom), +65-6732-8768 (Singapore), +61-3-9674-0454 (Australia) and 1-519-884-2251 (Rest of World).

Copyright © 2006 MKS Inc. MKS are trademarks or registered trademarks of MKS Inc. All other trademarks mentioned in this release are the property of their respective owners.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made. When used in this document, the words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect MKS’s current views with respect to future events and are subject to such risks and uncertainties. Many factors could cause our actual results to differ materially from the statements made including those factors detailed from time to time in filings made by MKS with Canadian securities regulatory authorities. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described herein as intended, planned, anticipated or expected. Although MKS believes the expectations represented by such forward looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that those expectations will prove to be correct. MKS does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

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