Digital Evolution Delivers Industry's First XML VPN Appliance.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Digital Evolution XML VPN Products Drive Secure, Easy Partner Integration Through Web Services 

Digital Evolution(TM), a leading provider of Web services security and management software, today announced the availability of industry's first XML VPN product family -- ushering in the next chapter of the Internet. The Digital Evolution XML VPN appliance ensures secure and managed Web services communication between business partners, clearing the final hurdles in the transition from Web sites to Web services. By minimizing security risks and automating the provisioning process, the XML VPN appliance helps organizations and their partners leverage the benefits of Web services, and accelerates the use of Web services for business-to-business communication.

Digital Evolution created its XML VPN appliance to make it easy for companies to securely consume their partners Web services. With the rapid adoption of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) standards by enterprises and government organizations, XML and Web services are becoming the inevitable and best choice for exposing and consuming corporate information among disparate parties. Enterprise partners need to share information to support critical business processes including inventory management, purchasing, accounting, trading, and numerous emerging business models. By offering XML and Web services to partners, companies are reporting dramatic business growth and cost savings.

With its XML VPN, Digital Evolution is defining a new market segment: the scalable and secure offering of corporate application services as essential building blocks of partners' business processes. This capability enables dramatic cost savings and lucrative new business models. Until now enterprises have not been able to give their partners secure standards-based programmatic access to internal systems. Even companies that have built Web services for partner access have been forced to hard-code policy and security information in a manner that defeats the purpose of an SOA-based approach. With the Digital Evolution XML VPN product family, organizations can now share and expose Web services to their partner network -- delivering real value in a completely secure, managed and provisioned environment.

"Many large enterprises are beginning to enable their value chain through the use of Web services," said Daryl Plummer, vice president and research fellow at Gartner Research. "As this process continues, it is critical that these enterprises maintain control of their distributed value chain. The security, and ease of use of the services they expose will determine how successful they can be in becoming an essential part of their partners' business processes."

The Digital Evolution XML VPN product family securely extends XML and Web services based application interfaces into selected partner organizations giving them the ability to manage their XML communication with partners in three fundamental ways.

--Security -- the XML VPN product family supplies the critical security needed to manage transactions, authenticate users, authorize what can be done by users as well as provide privacy and non-repudiation. It also includes compressive automated PKI support.

--Provisioning -- the XML VPN controller is a provisioning tool that gives enterprises an automated means to invite and then coordinate a community of Web services consumers.

--Manageability -- the Digital Evolution XML VPN product family leverages Digital Evolution's market-leading Web services management technology to give users the flexibility to guarantee quality-of-service, deal with change over time, and add additional services while supporting the rapid growth that is expected as organizations reap the benefits of Web services.

"Finding a way to secure Web services and SOAs has been a stumbling block for many organizations that want to expose information via XML and Web services that they believe will benefit their partners, and until today, that communication has not been possible," said Eric Pulier, founder and chairman of Digital Evolution. "Digital Evolution believes that enterprises should be able to give their partners the benefits of Web services today without having to fear that their security is at risk. With the Digital Evolution XML VPN product family, our customers will be able to deliver immediate partner to partner communication, in a completely secure, managed and provisioned environment with the flexibility to grow and change over time."

Digital Evolution VPN Products:

XML VPN Controller -- The XML VPN Controller provides central policy and rights management and transaction auditing services for an XML VPN environment. It is available as a software product for deployment by a VPN provider.

The Controller includes comprehensive delegated management and Web services rights provisioning capabilities. It is the central certificate and key management service for a VPN instance. The Controller also acts as the collection point for distributed audit data gathering and reporting. It manages and reports on the completion of transactions, maintaining a complete audit record.

XML VPN Appliance -- The XML VPN Appliance is a high-performance edge device that publishes internal services, and consumes external services.

Service providers use the XML VPN Appliance to securely publish internal Web services to selected partners as determined by the Controller.

Service consumers can use Web services standards including WS-Security, XML-Signature and XML-Encryption to connect to authorized Web services. Alternatively they can choose to use the XML VPN Appliance to consume their partners' Web services and expose them to their applications as local services. This delegates external security to the VPN and abstracts local applications from this burden. It also means that provider partners can leverage a single secure identity (typically an X.509 certificate) for all interactions with each of their partners.

Pricing and Availability:

The Digital Evolution XML VPN product family is available immediately. XML VPN solutions start at $75K.

About Digital Evolution

Founded in 1998, Digital Evolution is the leading provider of comprehensive enterprise class SOA security, management, and provisioning solutions. Digital Evolution is the largest specialist vendor of SOA solutions and the only company that offers a complete SOA fabric. Digital Evolution's solutions unlock the enormous cost savings potential of Service-Oriented Architecture, XML and Web services by enabling application reuse, guaranteeing quality-of-service, and ensuring the security of mission critical data. Digital Evolution is a privately held company backed by leading investors including Redpoint, Mellon Ventures, Paladin Capital Group, and Palisades Ventures Fund. The company is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, with sales offices in Boston, New York City and Atlanta. For more information, please visit http://www.digev.com.