SOA Infrastructure Leaders Introduce New SOA Maturity Model.

BEDFORD, Mass. -- AmberPoint, Sonic Software and Systinet Collaborate on Model to Assess, Guide and Establish Vision for Maximizing the Strategic Benefits of SOA investments; Launch 10-City Management Forum Tour

Sonic Software (www.sonicsoftware.com), the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB), today announced that it has joined forces with AmberPoint (www.amberpoint.com) and Systinet (www.systinet.com) to create and publish a new Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) Maturity Model (SOA MM). Together these firms will publicly present the SOA Maturity Model to senior IT decision managers during a 10-city Management Forum Seminar Series designed to educate managers on the strategic business value of SOA.

Influenced by field experience in thousands of SOA implementations, Forrester Research Vice President Randy Heffner, and leveraging the well known SEI Capability Maturity Model(R) Integration (CMMI), this new SOA Maturity Model provides a tool that managers can use to assess their teams, projects and overall organizational capabilities with respect to SOA maturity. The model defines five levels of maturity and sets a vision for business benefits realized at each of these levels. IT decision makers can use this model to educate business managers and set expectations within executive teams. Using the SOA Maturity Model, managers can determine at what level their organization is currently executing and can see where they can go in terms of advancing to higher levels of maturity. The model also provides recommendations for setting management goals and identifies key practices that need to be performed with regularity before advancing.

Following its debut in the Management Forums, the new SOA Maturity Model will be published to the public on October 27, 2005.

"SOA represents a fundamental shift in the way organizations develop, configure, test, deploy and execute business processes across their organizations. CEOs, CFOs, Business Unit managers, as well as IT leaders and managers need a simple yet accurate model for understanding SOA and setting achievable expectations for the business benefits that can be derived from their SOA technology investment," said Jon Bachman, senior director of product marketing for Sonic Software. "This new SOA Maturity Model provides the clear model and detailed guidance to enable SOA leaders to establish and lead multi-year SOA initiatives."

"Organizations looking to quickly gain business value from service-oriented systems need a prescriptive roadmap for technology adoption," said Gordon Loudon, vice president of AmberPoint's Customer Experience Group. "The SOA Maturity Model will help to keep these companies from early mistakes with SOA. It shows the adoption path most effective for organizations to grow their use of loosely-coupled systems from initial experiments through to complex, heterogeneous business-to-business applications."

"Forward-thinking companies are already embarking on an SOA strategy and are looking for guidance on best practices," said Sean Kline, director of product marketing, Systinet. "Our forum series will help senior IT executives incrementally implement SOA in a way that is scalable, offers solid governance, and provides real business value."

10-City Management Forum Series

The 10-city management forum series, "The Strategic Benefits of Accelerating SOA Deployment," features Forrester analyst Randy Heffner, InfoWorld editors and SOA industry leaders Sonic Software, Systinet, AmberPoint and BearingPoint. The half-day educational seminars present the new comprehensive SOA Maturity Model, discuss ways to accelerate the adoption of SOA and feature case studies that articulate the strategic business benefits of SOA. Scheduled from September 20 to October 13, the seminars are available in New York City; Parsippany, NJ; Tyson's Corner, VA; Philadelphia, PA; Atlanta, GA; Dallas, TX; Chicago, IL; Minneapolis, MN; San Francisco, CA; and Irvine, CA. For more information, visit www.sonicsoftware.com/news_events/seminars/soamgmtforum_sonic.

About AmberPoint

AmberPoint is the industry's leading provider of SOA visibility, management and security solutions. Customers such as British Telecommunications, H&R Block, Motorola and the U.S. Department of Defense have chosen AmberPoint for its comprehensive capabilities, its non-invasive approach and its native support for Java and .NET. For more information, contact AmberPoint at 510.663.6300 or [e-mail], or visit www.amberpoint.com for a complimentary developer's edition of AmberPoint software.

About Systinet

Systinet is the leading software provider of the foundation for SOA governance and business service lifecycle management. Founded in 2000, Systinet's award-winning, proven, and standards-based products enable IT organizations to rapidly leverage existing technology investments, provide interoperability between heterogeneous systems, and better align business processes with IT. Customers receive the benefits of a simpler, faster, standards-based way to dramatically improve IT responsiveness and technology asset reuse, while maximizing the ROI for SOA. Systinet's customer base of over 150 Global 2000 clients includes Amazon.com, CIBC, BMC Software, JP Morgan, Motorola, Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and Starwood Hotels. Headquartered in Burlington, Mass., Systinet is a privately held company with over 100 employees. www.systinet.com

About Sonic Software Corporation

Sonic Software is the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB), a new communication and integration infrastructure that supports the enterprise requirements of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Sonic's technology delivers the scalability, security, continuous availability and management capabilities necessary to connect, integrate and control distributed, mission critical business processes. Over 1,000 customers use Sonic products to achieve broad-scale interoperability of IT systems and the flexibility to adapt these systems to ever-changing business needs.

Sonic Software is an independent operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), a US$360+ million global software industry leader. Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., Sonic Software can be reached on the Web at http://www.sonicsoftware.com, or by phone at [phone] or 1-866-GET-SONIC.

Sonic Software (and design) is a registered trademark of Sonic Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.