Progress Software Delivers E-Business Messaging Infrastructure to Meet Massive Scalability and Availability Demands.

Business/Technology Editors

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--September 11, 2000

Commerce One First to Adopt Next Generation of Progress Software's

SonicMQ

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ:PRGS), a leading supplier of technology for building E-Business solutions, today announced Progress(R) SonicMQ(TM) 3.0, the next generation of its award-winning E-Business Messaging infrastructure for the reliable, scalable and secure transport of business-critical data over the Internet. In a related announcement today, Commerce One has selected Progress(R) SonicMQ 3.0 for its MarketSite Portal Solution.

Companies are aggressively implementing E-Business initiatives as a new breed of applications are reshaping the Internet landscape and driving new infrastructure requirements. As the E-Business Messaging infrastructure powering the world's largest B2B exchanges, SonicMQ 3.0 represents a major evolution in messaging technology.

"SonicMQ 3.0 is the only messaging solution that can deliver the massive scalability, reliability and performance required for E-Business," said Progress Software's Dan Potter, vice president of product marketing. "SonicMQ has enjoyed rapid market adoption and through our relationship with Commerce One, SonicMQ will be deployed at tens of thousands of additional enterprises further establishing SonicMQ as the de facto standard for E-Business Messaging."

"The rapid acceptance of SonicMQ by B2B vendors and users, including the rapidly growing commercial trading communities of Commerce One, illustrates and validates the need for a standards-based messaging technology that addresses the demanding scalability, availability and reliability needs of E-Business," said Sally Cusack, research manager, middleware and businessware at International Data Corporation.

SonicMQ 3.0 Dynamic Routing Architecture

E-Business applications bring together a number of variables that make the integration and exchange of business-critical data a highly complex endeavor. SonicMQ 3.0 introduces a Dynamic Routing Architecture (DRA) which represents a major evolution over previous generations of messaging products and lays the foundation for meeting today's E-Business requirements.

SonicMQ's DRA allows enterprises to participate in a global E-Business exchange through a single point of entry. As new trading domains (either enterprises or B2B exchanges) come online, SonicMQ dynamically discovers new destinations and delivers messages between them via an optimized routing path. Multi-domain routing makes it possible for messages to easily span domains, eliminating the need to make application changes as an E-Business expands.

-- Massive Scalability

The Dynamic Routing Architecture (DRA) provides the ability to dynamically add tens of thousands of business partners to an E-Business application. Running SonicMQ allows users to participate in a massively scalable messaging infrastructure delivering millions of messages per day.

-- 7 x 24 Availability

SonicMQ Interbroker Clustering allows multiple servers to operate as a unit, eliminating single points of failure within the messaging system. Load balancing and connect-time failover ensure 7x24 availability and allow administrators to establish an efficient routing configuration that can be managed from a centralized configuration server.

-- End-to-End Security

SonicMQ's DRA provides the most comprehensive security solution for messaging over the Internet. It provides full access control and certificate-based mutual authentication for server-server and client-server security. The DRA also provides end-to-end secure communication through both message payload and channel encryption, while flexible HTTP/HTTPS leverages existing Internet security mechanisms and allows messages to easily travel through multiple firewalls.

-- Guaranteed Reliability

SonicMQ guarantees the delivery of business-critical information via durable subscriptions and persistent messages that ensure once-and-only-once delivery with no loss of messages. Long duration persistence for disconnected users is supported through an embedded database or other JDBC-compliant relational databases. SonicMQ also provides transactional support where one or more messages can be specified as a transacted set.

-- Real-time Performance

Independent benchmarks substantiate SonicMQ's unmatched performance, which is further enhanced with the introduction of a Concurrent Transacted Memory Cache. This breakthrough technology delivers optimized performance for guaranteed message delivery. Single server (dual CPU) metrics includes support for 2,000 concurrent connections with 10MB per second throughput.

-- Connectivity and Standards

SonicMQ is based on the Java (TM) Message Service (JMS) specification, which provides a common set of interfaces, messaging concepts and programming strategies. It also provides native support for the following Internet and enterprise standards:

--Internet protocols, including TCP/IP, HTTP and SSL 

--Internet security via firewall tunneling, SSL, encryption and digital certificates

--Java Message Service (JMS) compliance

--Connectivity bridges: MQSeries, JMS-compliant messaging systems, SMTP 

--XML message type and DOM-capable client

--Open administration API with SNMP support

--100% Java server, with Java, COM/ActiveX and C clients

Product Availability

SonicMQ Version 3.0 beta registration is available today at www.sonicmq.com. SonicMQ ships in two versions: SonicMQ Developer Edition, a free version allowing developers to build and test messaging applications; and SonicMQ Enterprise Edition, a fully featured product for deployment and complex development environments.

SonicMQ is certified for the following operating environments: Microsoft Windows NT, Sun Solaris, Linux, HP-UX and AIX. SonicMQ includes an embedded relational database and alternatively is certified to run with Oracle8i, Microsoft SQL Server V7.0 and Progress RDBMS 9.1.

About Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) is a global supplier of software products and services for developing, deploying and managing business applications moving to the Internet. We offer superior messaging servers, application servers, databases, and application development and management products. Our partners include more than 2,000 application service providers (ASPs) and independent software vendors (ISVs) who supply annually over $5 billion in Progress(R)-based applications and related services. Our products are used by over 10,000 organizations across 100 countries worldwide, including 60% of Fortune 100 companies. For more information, visit www.progress.com or call [phone].

Progress is a registered trademark and SonicMQ is a trademark of Progress Software Corporation. Java and all Java-based marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the US and other countries. Commerce One is a trademark of Commerce One, Inc. Any other trademarks and/or servicemarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.