Arjuna Enables Reliable Web Services-Based Business Applications with ArjunaXTS.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

NEWCASTLE, U.K.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 28, 2003

Technology to address the reliable coordination issues preventing

the early adoption of serious e-business solutions

through Web services.

Arjuna Technologies, one of the world's leading centers of expertise in standards-based distributed transactioning software, today announced the early-access availability of the Arjuna XML Transaction Service (XTS). XTS provides coordination infrastructure to support business transactions that span multiple Web services, ensuring that the consistency of the overall business transaction is maintained even in the event of occasional component failures. XTS is fully standards compliant - the programming interfaces are based on the emerging Java API for XML Transactioning (JAXTX) and the architecture is based on the recently released WS-Composite Application Framework (WS-CAF). XTS future-proofs transactional applications through an innovative pluggable coordination protocol architecture. Version 1.0 includes protocol support for WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction.

"Providing reliable transaction management is critical for Web Services based application integration," says Patrick Vallaeys, VP of Marketing and Product Management at Infravio. "We're excited about integrating ArjunaXTS as the transaction management plug-in function for our Ensemble product suite. This will allow our customers to build, deploy and manage Web Services for critical business processes, both within their company and for B2B solutions."

Transaction processing is at the core of commerce and classic ACID transactions are not suitable for loosely coupled environments such as Web services. Steve Caughey, CEO at Arjuna, said, "Take, for example, a manufacturer that uses Web services to automate the ordering and delivery processes with their suppliers. The transaction between the manufacturer and its suppliers might only be considered completed once all parts are delivered to their final destination, which could be days or even weeks after an order is placed. Participants in a business-to-business transaction will likely be unwilling or unable to reserve any underlying resources exclusively for the duration as they'd have to do with traditional TP technologies. ArjunaXTS solves these overriding problems by providing a new type of extended transaction infrastructure designed to support the loosely-coupled Web services environment."

Dave Ingham, Arjuna's CTO said, "XTS is constructed as a generic extended transaction framework that can support a variety of protocols. As a result, applications built using the standards-based programming interfaces can be isolated from the underlying protocol evolution. Implementers, therefore have the advantage of being able to migrate to the latest protocol specification as it becomes adopted by the industry without affecting their application development."

"Arjuna has cut to the core of what is holding Web Services back from being adopted for mission critical applications," said Bob Bickel, former General Manager of the HP Middleware Division and member of the Arjuna Technical Advisory Board. "Not only have they provided a reliable mechanism to conduct business transactions, they have designed a unique architecture that allows pluggable protocols, embracing well-known standards like WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction backed by Microsoft and IBM as well as the new WS-CAF from Arjuna, Iona, Fujitsu, Sun and Oracle."

About Arjuna Technologies, Ltd.

Arjuna Technologies is a leading independent supplier of standards-based middleware technology for reliable distributed systems. Arjuna was created from the former Hewlett-Packard Arjuna Lab, HP's Centre of Excellence for transactioning, messaging and related technologies. Arjuna is privately owned and based in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.

Arjuna pioneered the world's first transactioning toolkit for Web Services, released in March 2002. Arjuna recently announced the Web Services Composite Applications Framework (WS-CAF), a set of specifications that they developed for the coordination of complex business applications in collaboration with Fujitsu, Iona, Oracle and Sun. Later this year Arjuna will release an advanced reliable messaging product to enable secure and reliable integration of Web services and enterprise applications within and across organizational boundaries. Visit www.arjuna.com for more information.

Arjuna is a trademark of Hewlett-Packard Company under license to Arjuna Technologies Ltd. XTS and ArjunaXTS are trademarks of Arjuna Technologies Ltd.