Mandriva opens office in Lagos

Paris, 22 February 2007 - Mandriva West Africa to start operations in
February 2007 to offer the Mandriva Linux operating system and open
source applications and solutions to individuals, educational
institutions, public and private organizations, ISVs and OEMs all over
West Africa.

As part of its commitment to help bridge the digital divide and make
ICT affordable and available to the people of West Africa, Mandriva,
the global Linux distributor, has reached an agreement to establish a
subsidiary company, Mandriva West Africa, with headquarters in Lagos,
Nigeria.

The goal of Mandriva West Africa is to provide local distribution of
Mandriva Linux and other integrated open source applications in
English and French throughout the West Africa region.

Mandriva West Africa strategic goals are based on the following:

   * Produce and distribute Mandriva Linux and the bundled
     OpenOffice.org and other bundled open source applications.

   * Work with local Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to bundle
     Mandriva Linux with their hardware, thereby making computers more
     affordable for all West Africans.

   * Work with Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to provide an open
     source integration environment for their application, thereby
     make their products available to the international market.

   * Work with educational institutions and organizations in bridging
     the digital divide. 

   * Appoint and develop Mandriva certified business partners to
     provide Linux deployment and act as a support network to help
     individuals and organizations.

   * Appoint and develop Mandriva authorized education centers to
     provide Linux Professional Institute-certified Linux training and
     create a network of certified Linux engineers and professionals. 

The OEM versions of all Mandriva products are currently available and
running on hardware from major international OEM vendors like HP,
IBM/Lenovo, Dell and Acer. Mandriva West Africa plans to work with
local OEMs in bundling these products on their hardware.

"When you own any of the products above, you don't need any other
software. It is fully integrated with productive applications like
OpenOffice.org, CD/DVD burner, virus protection, firewall, accounting
software, web browsers, HTML editors, FTP server and client, DHCP
server and client, DNS, web server, multimedia, free Skype to Skype
calling, mail server and clients, instant messaging, games, MySQL and
PostgreSQL databases, video conferencing, SSH and TightVNC for remote
access, OpenVM and VMware for virtualization, graphic applications and
many more", said Dele Ajisomo, Mandriva representative for West
Africa.



About Mandriva
Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, is the publisher of the popular
Mandriva Linux operating system, one of the most full-featured and easy to
use Linux systems. The company offers its enterprise, government, and
educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and open source software
and related services. Mandriva products are available in more than 140
countries through dedicated channels and also from Mandriva Store, the
company's online store. Born in 1998, the company has offices in the United
States, France and Brazil. More information at: www.mandriva.com

Press contacts:

Microbyte International / Mandriva West Africa 
Dele Ajisomo - dele@microbyteinc.com - +1 630 946 0588 (USA) / +234 1 813 2844 (Nigeria)

Mandriva
Celine Harrand - celine.harrand@mandriva.com - +33 (0)1 40 41 97 29
Emilie Ngo-van Do - engovando@mandriva.com - +33 (0)1 40 41 67 67
Guillaume Martin - gmartin@mandriva.com - +33 (0)1 40 41 17 64


______________________________________________________________________
You receive this email because you are in our journalist database. If
you do not want to receive information about us anymore, just reply
to this press release with "remove me" as a subject. Sorry for the
inconvenience.