ESI Group strengthens its position in Truffle 100 Europe 2007

Paris (France), 30 January 2008 – ESI Group (ESIN FR0004110310), a world-leading supplier of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes, has announced a major rise in its ranking in the new Truffle 100 list of the top 100 European software vendors, reaching 47th position, up from 58th last year.

Paris (France), 30 January 2008 – ESI Group (ESIN FR0004110310), a world-leading supplier of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes, has announced a major rise in its ranking in the new Truffle 100 list of the top 100 European software vendors, reaching 47th position, up from 58th last year.

Alain de Rouvray, Chairman and CEO of ESI Group, comments, “The improvement in the 2007 Truffle 100 ranking illustrates ESI Group’s ability to implement, among OEMs, physics-based realistic digital simulation processes in an industrial context, while improving our global performance. The full-year performance was generally satisfactory as 2006/07 annual sales, sustained by sales from licences, which remain our main activity, totalled €66 million, up 7.6% at constant exchange rates. With ESI Group’s innovation ability and the help of the strengthened management team, the company is remarkably well positioned to continue climbing in the Truffle 100 Europe ranking in the coming years.”

The Truffle 100 ranks and highlights the top European software companies and underlines the potential of these players. The software industry is highly strategic, as it creates jobs and adds value to European economies. The Truffle 100 is the leading European reference for software vendors, industry observers and public-sector authorities.

“Our data clearly shows that the European software industry is succeeding in reversing the brain drain of the 1990s, when many qualified IT employees sought jobs outside Europe. Last year, the Truffle 100 invested €3.3 billion in R&D and employed 175,000 people,” says Bernard-Louis Roques, General Partner and Co-Founder of Truffle Capital. “This is excellent news for European economies, which will profit greatly by increased employment throughout the software industry, and ESI Group is becoming a key player of that industry in Europe, starting with France, where it is headquartered.”

ESI Group’s innovative role is confirmed by the improvement in its ranking. This also demonstrates that the group’s management’s vision and strategy are in line with the industry’s requirements. Moreover, it acknowledges the talents of all ESI Group’s employees and the efforts required to become a leading player on the market.

In highly competitive sectors such as the automotive industry, ESI Group has secured its strategic position through various innovative projects, which have been mainly carried out with long-standing partners including Faurecia, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Renault / Nissan, and the Volkswagen / Audi group.

ESI Group has also signed a strategic collaboration with Chengdu Aircraft Industry for its aircraft design and manufacturing engineering processes. Chengdu Aircraft Industry is a major Chinese aircraft manufacturer and partner of the global aviation industry for aeronautic composites manufacturing engineering

ESI Group is taking an active part in various major European and French innovative projects. It is involved with the European MARI Consortium (for marine, aerospace, rail and industrial structures), which was created in order to establish modelling guidelines for digital simulation dimensioning and which also underpins major progress in the vibro-acoustic field. ESI Group is also a member of the following projects: the Teratec Association (High-Performance Digital Simulation and Intensive Computing Cluster), which gathers the major French operators in this field; the I-Trans European project, which is at the heart of development in innovative transportation systems; and, finally, the IOLS project (Infrastructure and Software Tool for Simulation).

About ESI Group

ESI Group is a pioneer and world-leading supplier of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials. ESI Group has developed an entire suite of coherent, industry-oriented applications to simulate a product’s behaviour realistically during testing, to fine-tune the manufacturing processes in accordance with the desired product performance, and to evaluate the environment’s impact on product usage.

ESI Group’s products, which have a proven track record in manufacturing and have been combined in multi-trade value chains, represent a unique collaborative, virtual engineering solution, known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling virtual prototypes to be improved in a continuous manner. By drastically reducing costs and development lead times, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantages and make it possible to eliminate gradually the need for physical prototypes. This integrated protocol allows all the company’s solutions to work with each other and with applications developed by independent software vendors. By significantly reducing costs and development lead times and enabling product/process synergies, VTOS solutions progressively eliminate the need for physical prototypes during product development, thus offering major competitive advantages.

ESI Group is listed on the Eurolist compartment C of Euronext Paris, and generated sales of €66m in 2006. The company employs over 600 high-level specialists worldwide, and covers more than 30 countries.

Virtual Try-Out Space® and VTOS® are registered trademarks of ESI Group. All other products, names and companies mentioned in this press release are brands, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For further information, please go to: www.esi-group.com

About the Truffle 100 Europe

For the second year in a row, the Truffle 100 Europe, which was established with the support of CXP, a market research organisation focused on software, and IDC, a leading global market intelligence firm, examines leading players in the software industry, reveals new trends and demonstrates the vitality of the industry and its contribution to the Lisbon Agenda. The Truffle 100 Europe was initiated by Truffle Capital, a leading venture capital firm in Europe, along with Syntec Informatique. It is published in conjunction with the main national IT trade associations in Europe – Agoria (Belgium), Aitech-Assinform (Italy), BITKOM (Germany) and Intellect (UK).

For further information, please go to: http://www.truffle100.com

About Truffle Capital

Founded in 2002 in Paris (France), Truffle Capital is a leading venture-capital firm dedicated to building and investing in technology leaders in the IT, life-sciences and energy sectors. With €250 million under management, Truffle Capital is led by a team of four partners with decades of successful investment and entrepreneurial experience in both Europe and Silicon Valley. Truffle Capital aims to achieve superior financial returns by leveraging its industry knowledge, extensive network and unique focus on spin-offs to better identify business ventures that match latent market needs.

For further information, please go to: http://www.truffle.com