CCP calls on Umbra to shore up the bullpen.

Just like a middle-reliever in baseball, middleware in software development holds a significant albeit largely unknown/unheralded place on the roster. CCP has signed an agreement with Umbra Software to use Umbra's Occlusion Culling Middleware for EVE Online and CCP's other games in the pipeline. Umbra is staking quite a claim in the MMO industry and seems to be garnering some good results. These comments are from HalldAr Fannar, CCP's Chief Technology Offiver:

"The Umbra middleware is very mature technology. The integration was a snap and we've been extremely pleased with the results. We're seeing near constant time for occlusion queries, independent of scene complexity. This is an important building block for the highly detailed worlds that we are now creating."

Translated into layman's terms, I think he is saying that the software is good and they like it. For more information, the Business Wire report can be found on Market Watch.