IONA Technologies announced it has signed a definitive agreement to purchase substantially all of the assets of Watershed Technologies of Waltham, Massachusetts for $13.2 million in cash and IONA stock. This acquisition is expected to be accounted for as a purchase and is expected to close in the March quarter. Watershed Technologies is a privately held company that provides XML-based tools and services for building standards-based business-to-business and business-to-consumer portals. The addition of Watershed’s XML technology and services to IONA will enhance the iPortal Suite and strengthen IONA’s ability to deliver it to market. Watershed’s product offerings will deliver capabilities for XML, SOAP, Enterprise Java Beans, B2B interaction capabilities, portal and GUI frameworks for content and presentation development, and vertical market portal templates for industries such as healthcare. These standards-based technologies will be incorporated as plug-ins into the iPortal Server. www.iona.com