Axian, Inc., is a twelve year old software consulting firm based in Portland, Oregon. Axian provides software consulting/contracting services (2/3 of sales) and educational services (1/3 of sales) on either a short-term or long-term contract basis to users or manufacturers of computer systems or electronic devices. The Company's technical staff members are skilled software developers that have the ability to work with a wide variety of programming languages, operating systems, hardware platforms and application programming interfaces. A number of the staff engineers are also experienced graduate-level instructors who work part-time on engineering projects for customers while teaching or developing courses in software languages and tools, operating systems, development methodologies, and systems administration to corporate engineering and IT groups.

Executive level consulting is provided on technology direction and selection of development platforms in addition to working with attorneys on software related litigation and providing expert testimony.

The Company occupies a 6,000 square foot facility in Beaverton, Oregon, and serves clients in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area (80% of sales), the San Francisco Bay Area, California (10%) and other areas (10%). Axian is a sub-chapter S corporation with three shareholders.

A) Professional Services to R&D Engineering and Enterprise IT
Axian is unique in its capability to architect, develop and integrate with a broad range of technologies. Staff engineers hold certifications from Red Hat (Linux), Sun Microsystems (Java and Systems Engineering), Microsoft (Development and Systems Engineering), Oracle, and others.

Enterprise IT services include:

1. Data-driven business solutions
2. Consulting on technology direction and selection of development platforms
3. n-tier enterprise system architecture and design
4. Middleware development and integration
5. Mentoring and training

Engineering skills include:

1. Architecting, developing or updating software
2. Porting programs between operating systems
3. Tuning applications for optimal performance
4. Integrating or networking computers systems
5. Project management

B) Educational Services
Training courses taught by Axian are week-long courses geared toward graduate-level engineers and system administrators.

• Programming languages including Java; .NET languages; C; C++; Visual Basic
• Object-Orient Design and Programming
• Linux System and Network Administration
• Linux Programming Essentials; Linux Device Drivers and Kernel Internals
• Parallel Programming
• Intel Architecture Performance Tuning
• Win32 API Programming; MFC; COM; ActiveX; ATL
• Microsoft SQL Server System Administration and MCSE courses
• Sun ONE Java Technology; Solaris System Administration; Networking & Security, XML

C) Technology
Axian is strongest in five segments of software technology:

ENTERPRISE AND INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES
Designers of extensible, scalable distributed systems leveraging current and emerging Internet computing techniques. Skilled at understanding how computing systems impact a company's business and with the ability to architect and develop multi-tier systems.

LINUX
Axian is an Alliance Partner of Red Hat Software. Linux project work includes application development, porting, writing device drivers, and assisting customers to build and deploy their Linux-compatible software products. Axian develops and teaches the Linux Developer series courses offered by Red Hat.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
Axian engineers have extensive experience with a variety of real-time embedded operating systems such as VxWorks and Embedded Linux, and are skilled at working close to the hardware as C/C++ or assembly language programmers. Developers have been involved in many projects for Semiconductor Capital Equipment companies working on the software design for the most advanced multi-million dollar systems comprised of multiple computing platforms and architectures.

HIGH PERFORMACE COMPUTING
Axian has ten years of experience porting applications to parallel platforms and tuning performance of applications to run on multi-threaded, multi-processor systems from IBM, Intel, Sun Microsystems and others.

MICROSOFT DEVELOPMENT TECHNOLOGIES
Axian has developed programs and taught custom courses for years using Microsoft DNA software development technologies and more recently, .NET

D) Staff and Customers
Axian's staff of 30 developers, instructors and administrative personnel serve an account base consisting of dozens of repeat customers among its 135 customers these last 3 years. These include computer manufacturers, software companies, semiconductor equipment/electrical product manufacturers, and users of large information systems such as financial institutions and forest products companies. Axian's long-term staff of highly experienced development, engineering and training consultants differentiates the Company from standard IT consulting and outsource organizations. With their breadth and depth of expertise, Axian staff members can fill the need for contract engineers or contribute as architects and project leaders when required.

Many customers come to Axian initially seeking either software development expertise or technical training, yet find as they get to know the Company that the combined ability of Axian staff members to both develop software and pass on their knowledge to other developers and engineers in a classroom environment is of the greatest value.

Background

A group of software engineers and computational scientists wanted to use their expertise to offer customers superior services and be given the freedom to design best-fit solutions for customers. Something not always afforded at other consulting firms.

In 1991 the group founded CETech as a software consulting firm. After operating for five years, the company merged with A:>SOFTWARE.HLP, a premier software training company, and became Axian, Inc. The combined backgrounds and expertise in computing technologies span many generations of languages and architectures. Axian has developed software and provided on-site staffing and technical training for companies in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

Today we continue the original vision of offering superior services and helping our customers create best-fit solutions for their software projects. Axian's staff of software developers are available on a contract or project basis to provide the specific skills and expertise required by our clients. Project teams can be formed or individual software developers assigned to staff our clients' engineering projects, either at Axian's office or at a client's site.

Axian's consulting and contract engineering services are complemented by a series of technical training courses. The training group is focused on helping software developers and computer users learn to program in a variety of languages and operating environments, and to use and administer various systems. Classes are held at Axian's Training Center in Beaverton, at PCC's Computer Education Centers, or at any customer's location worldwide.

The Axian expert staff has:

• Average years of high-technology industry experience: 15 years
• Total Staff: 30 engineers, developers, and instructors; 5 administrative personnel
• Highest Degrees: 4 Ph.D., 11 Masters Degree, 15 Bachelors Degree

Staff backgrounds include:

• Computer Science
• Electrical Engineering
• Mathematics
• Systems Engineering
• Physics
• Chemistry
• Chemical Engineering
• Geology
• Astronomy
• Business Management
• Accounting
• Literature
• Aeronautics
• Mechanical Engineering
• Operations Research