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Private company

IONA Technologies

Logo: jmcarthy99, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons3

Irish software company

IONA Technologies, Inc. was an Irish software company founded in 1991. It began as a campus company linked to Trinity College Dublin had its headquarters in Dublin, and eventually also expanded its offices in Boston and Tokyo. It specialised in distributed service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology, its products connecting systems and applications by creating a network of services without requiring a centralised server or creating an information technology project.2 It ceased to exist in 2008.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1991Founded1
  • Industrysoftware industry1
  • HeadquartersDublin1
  • Websitewww.iona.com
  • Legal formjoint-stock company1

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IONA Technologies, Inc. was an Irish software company founded in 1991. It began as a campus company linked to Trinity College Dublin had its headquarters in Dublin, and eventually also expanded its offices in Boston and Tokyo. It specialised in distributed service-oriented architecture (SOA) technology, its products connecting systems and applications by creating a network of services without requiring a centralised server or creating an information technology project. IONA was the first Irish company to float on the NASDAQ exchange. It was valued at up to US$1.75 billion at its peak. It was one of the world's 10 largest software-only companies, and around 30 new ventures spun out from it. IONA was sold to Progress Software in 2008.2

The story

In 1981, a Trinity College Dublin PhD student, Chris Horn, visited Stanford University, and met Andy Bechtolsheim, inventor of the Stanford University Network (SUN) workstation, and Bill Joy, and when they later went on to co-found Sun Microsystems, he began to talk to fellow academics about starting their own venture. Eventually, in 1991, IONA Technologies, was founded by Horn and fellow TCD academics Sean Baker and Annrai O’Toole, each of the three putting in 1,000 Irish pounds for starting capital. IONA received limited support from Trinity College, including an office with a desk and phone in TCD's O'Reilly Institute on Westland Row.

From Wikipedia’s article on IONA Technologies, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Products and brands

IONA's initial integration products were built using the CORBA standard, and later products were built using Web services standards.

IONA's products include:

IONA Artix – advanced SOA infrastructure suite. Components include:

Artix ESB (Enterprise Service Bus)

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Artix Registry/Repository

Artix Orchestration

Artix Mainframe

Artix Connect for WCF

Artix Data Services (formally Century 24's Integration Objects (IO). C24 was acquired by IONA in March 2007. In April 2011 C24 Technologies Limited acquired the product and brand from Progress Software and relaunched the product as C24iO.)

FUSE – IONA's version of open source projects that include testing and professional services. Components included:

FUSE ESB – commercial version of Apache ServiceMix

FUSE Message Broker – commercial version of Apache ActiveMQ

FUSE Services Framework – commercial version of Apache CXF

FUSE Mediation Router – commercial version of Apache Camel

Orbix – commercial CORBA software

Orbix DCE Security – commercial CORBA software for IT

Orbix Names and Orbix IFr – commercial CORBA software for IT

Orbix 3 with dynamic pluggable services, later Artix – commercial COBRA _IMP software for IT

Orbacus – embeddable C++ CORBA ORB

Professional services – training, consulting, and support

From Wikipedia’s article on IONA Technologies, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. 2008Dissolved Dissolved1
  2. 1991Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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