Toronto, CA (November 25, 2008)—Sanofi-Aventis, one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, recently agreed to a three-year contract to extend the use of Advanced Chemistry Development, Inc., (ACD/Labs) software throughout its R&D sites worldwide. The agreement includes provisions for continuing support, and a special pricing structure beneficial to both companies.

Sanofi-Aventis uses a range of ACD/Labs analytical, predictive, and nomenclature tools such as ACD/SpecManager, ACD/Structure Design Suite, ACD/PhysChem Batch predictors, and ACD/Name. Additional support provided under the new agreement will encourage greater adoption of these tools within all R&D sites, in particular in Europe and the USA. The new contract provides a special pricing model for the company based on the level of deployment throughout the various sites.

“This contract re-negotiation has been innovative in that it allows a higher predictability in the evolution of recurring maintenance and support costs, based on actual yearly usage of ACD/Labs solutions, while at the same time improving the cost-benefits ratio,” said Pascal FREMONT, IS Contract Management. “In addition, although Chemcad’s commercial area is limited to Europe, the contract has been fully globalized thanks to a special agreement from ACD/Labs, thus facilitating the assets management.”

“Sanofi-Aventis has been using ACD/Labs tools in its R&D groups throughout the organization for more than 5 years,” said Yves Lorrain, Director of Sales for Chemcad—a distributor of ACD/Labs products. “With this contract we will continue to provide the same high level of support and allow Sanofi-Aventis R&D scientists to maximize the intrinsic value of each of the ACD/Labs modules they use.” Chemcad is the exclusive distributor of ACD/Labs products for parts of Western Europe, including France, Belgium, Spain, The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.