Darden Restaurants Moves Forward with SIVA Point-of-Sale

Software Part of Next Generation Restaurant Technology Strategy

DELRAY BEACH, FL - (September 16, 2004) SIVA Corporation™ announced today that the company has executed a contract with Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE: DRI) for SIVA’s iSIVA™ point-of-sale suite. Darden owns and operates the Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, Smokey Bones and Seasons 52 casual dining restaurant brands.

The iSIVA™ point-of-sale and back office applications use an enterprise architecture and next generation Web technologies to help multi-unit operators manage money, materials and people more effectively and efficiently at multiple restaurant sites.

“Implementing a new point-of-sale is a major undertaking,” said Val Collins, Darden’s Chief Information Officer. “We had to consider current needs, as well as where we wanted to be in the future in terms of functionality and technical platform. Before making this decision we worked with point-of-sale labs from several vendors, performing extensive internal testing and commissioning external technology reviews. We also looked at service orientation and level of commitment to the project.”

According to CEO Jim Melvin, SIVA was one of the first software companies to recognize how emerging technologies could solve some of the biggest problems associated with the stand-alone systems found in restaurants today. “Our software is designed for the ‘always connected’ enterprise, which improves the availability of operations information throughout the organization while reducing the cost and complexity of application support,” Melvin said.

iSIVA™ uses a single enterprise database and built-in communications, eliminating database replication issues between geographically dispersed sites. The software’s architecture centralizes application management, streamlines disaster recovery, and provides a real-time, consolidated source of store data for other corporate applications. Written in Java, the platform-neutral software can be deployed in Windows, Linux and mixed environments as well as on a variety of terminals, including legacy systems. iSIVA can be installed in a fat or thin client configuration.

The next step in Darden’s point-of-sale process is moving the software out of a lab and into a live restaurant environment. Melvin, for one, is confident that the software will pass this new test with flying colors. “We are pleased to be working with Darden and committed to this project at every level of our organization,” he said.

About Darden Restaurants, Inc.
Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE: DRI), headquartered in Orlando, Fla., owns and operates over 1,300 Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, Smokey Bones and Seasons 52 restaurants, with annual sales of over $5 billion. For more information, please visit www.darden.com.