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Dialog & Elsag Solutions in Content Agreement for Sentinel System

Elsag’s Analysis Tools Add Value to Broad Range of Business News & Research Content From Dialog

LONDON (6 October 2004) — Dialog, a Thomson (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, said today that it has entered into a strategic relationship with Elsag Solutions AG, a European leader in information chain management solutions and a unit of the Elsag S.p.A. Group of Italy.

Under the agreement, an extensive range of Dialog business news, information and research content is available to enterprises subscribing to Elsag's Sentinel system, used for news monitoring, information sharing and research by corporations and government authorities mostly in the German-speaking regions of Europe.

The Sentinel system gives subscribing organisations the ability to set up automated, seamless links between an enterprise's internal information assets and relevant new and archived external content, such as the articles and reports from around the world now being supplied by Dialog.

Elsag also provides Sentinel users with built-in tools to generate analysis and manage information, such as automatic summarisations, translations and graphical representations of data.

"Our new agreement with Elsag is another example of our push to integrate our information resources into the real-life workflows of the professionals we serve around the world," said Charles White, Dialog vice president, global alliances. "We are particularly delighted to be working closely with Elsag, a highly respected company with great technology and a strong focus in key European markets, such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland."

Günter Obert, Elsag Solutions CEO, said that, "This partnership is a prime example of what synergy means. It represents a groundbreaking combination of Dialog content and our features for analysis, hyperlinking, aggregation and presentation of structured and unstructured information. The expected market potential for the resulting solution is significant. This agreement is of tremendous strategic importance for us."

While organisations subscribing to Sentinel may customise their external information flow by working with Dialog to choose files and databases from across the extensive range of Dialog content, the two companies said they expect most enterprises to focus on the continuously updated reservoir of global news, analysis and research drawn from more than 8,000 sources — including local, national and international newspapers, regional and national business publications, newswires, broadcast outlets, industry newsletters, trade journals, scholarly journals and others.

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About Elsag Solutions
Elsag Solutions AG, headquartered in Switzerland, has offices in Glattbrugg-Zürich and Villingen-Schwenningen (Germany). The company offers consulting, solutions and services for enterprise-wide information-, knowledge-, and business-process-management. Overarching paradigm of its portfolio is the path-breaking Information Chain Management (ICM) concept, which enables customers to benefit from integrated and automated procurement, capturing, preparation, distribution and usage of information.

Elsag Solutions' portfolio comprises among others scanning solutions for mid- to high-volumes of documents, integrated information-capturing, realization of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Knowledge Management projects, as well as Payment Transaction and Electronic Archival solutions. As a specialist in Web-based process automation Elsag Solutions enables its customers to increase their operations performance and service quality.

Reference customers are well-known banks and financial service providers, transport- and mail-order companies, data service providers and tax administration offices.

For more information: www.elsag-solutions.com

About Dialog and The Thomson Corporation
Dialog, a pioneer in developing the technology behind electronic information retrieval, is the world leader in providing online-based information services to organisations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as government, business, science, engineering, finance and law.

The online services provided by Dialog — offered through the Dialog®, Dialog Profound®, Dialog DataStar™, Dialog NewsEdge® and Dialog Intelliscope^SM brands — give users the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 1.4 billion unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise intranets. Searchable content includes articles and reports from thousands of real-time news feeds, newspapers, broadcast transcripts and trade publications, plus research reports and analyst notes providing support for financial decision-making, as well as in-depth repositories of scientific and technical data, patents, trademarks and other intellectual property data. Information professionals and end-users at business, professional and government organisations in more than 100 countries prize Dialog services for their depth and breadth of content, precision searching and speed.

Based in Cary, N.C., USA, Dialog has operations in 27 countries. Dialog (www.dialog.com) is a business of The Thomson Corporation (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC). With 2003 revenues of US$7.6 billion, Thomson (www.thomson.com) is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers.

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All designated trademarks used herein are the property of The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries. Registered marks are registered by The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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