MKS Announces Validated Process and Workflow Integration with Mercury Quality Center

Waterloo, ON — September 27, 2004: MKS Inc. (TSX: MKX), a leading provider of enterprise software configuration management (ESCM) solutions for the Global 1000, today announced its support for Mercury Quality Center™, Mercury's global quality assurance application suite, with MKS Integrity Manager®, MKS's process and workflow solution. This capability expands on the existing SCM integration between Mercury TestDirector and MKS Source Integrity® Enterprise Edition announced in December 2002.

The powerful combination of Mercury Quality Center and MKS Integrity Manager builds a continuous and two-way process flow between Development and Quality Assurance teams. Defects identified with the Mercury Quality Center are automatically cycled back into the development process via MKS Integrity Manager, and travel with associated development artifacts such as source code or documentation. The integration enables organizations to establish an enforceable and auditable process for defect resolution, improving software quality, enhancing development and QA team efficiency, and supporting IT governance initiatives. The integration has been fully validated through the Mercury Technology Alliance Partner Program and will be showcased in MKS's booth (#206) at Mercury World, November 7-10, 2004 in Orlando, Florida where MKS is a Gold Sponsor.

"We are pleased to deliver with our partner Mercury an enhanced level of process management capability that even more closely links development and QA functions. Ultimately, by using MKS Integrity Manager with Mercury Quality Center, our customers will benefit from more predictable development cycles, less software project risk, higher quality software and a more auditable development process," says David Martin, MKS vice president of Product Management.

"Quality Assurance is a crucial component of any IT project and is the responsibility of everyone involved – not just the QA Engineer, which makes it imperative for companies to ensure close, consistent collaboration between development, QA, and the business," said Mark Sarbiewski, senior director of products at Mercury.

To register for a Webinar entitled, "Implementing an Enforceable and Repeatable Development Process for Defect Resolution with MKS Integrity Manager and Mercury Quality Center," being held on October 7 at 2:00 p.m. EDT, please visit the following link at http://www.mks.com/go/mercuryandmksoct7.

Availability
Integration between MKS Integrity Manager 4.6 and Mercury Quality Center 8.0 (including TestDirector 7.6 and 8.0) is available today. Existing customers on maintenance may obtain the integration from the MKS Customer Community at: http://www.mks.com/community/index_i.jsp or by contacting MKS Customer Care at: support@mks.com.

About MKS
MKS Inc. ("MKS") (TSX: MKX) provides award-winning enterprise software configuration management (SCM) and interoperability software solutions enabling Global 1000 companies to better manage and control the complete process of software development. The company’s family of SCM products offers advanced technology with robust workflow, version control, and impact analysis capabilities. Under its widely known MKS Toolkit brand, MKS also provides UNIX-Windows co-existence, and system administration that significantly cut development and administrative costs and reduce time to market while enabling enhanced performance. Founded in 1984 with over 10,000 customers worldwide, MKS has built its brand on the foundation of advanced technology, superior quality and extraordinary customer service. 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), and +44-1483-733900 (United Kingdom).

Copyright © 2004 MKS Inc. MKS, MKS Integrity Manager, MKS Source Integrity and MKS Toolkit are 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 the Company’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 the Company 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. The Company does not intend and does not assume any obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

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