Vice President for Thomson Learning to Present at Worldwide SOA Forum; Chief Architect, Christopher Crowhurst, to Present ''SOA Governance: The Thomson Perspective''.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- The SOA Forum, an exclusive roundtable of senior IT executives and enterprise architects from Fortune 500 companies and Government agencies, today announced that Christopher Crowhurst, Vice President and Chief Architect for Thomson Learning (NYSE: TOC), a leading global provider of integrated information-based solutions to business and professional customers, will present "SOA Governance: The Thomson Perspective" to the SOA Forum on Monday March 20, 2006 at 2:00 PM (ET).

Crowhurst's presentation will focus on the emergence of "policies" in association with SOA Governance and how the implementation, enforcement and verification of compliance against corporate policies are rapidly becoming centers of both discussion and opportunity for IT leadership within the Thomson enterprise. The presentation will examine the Thomson view of Governance and policy management as well as its short and long-term implications for the company at large.

"The SOA Forum is an excellent vehicle for sharing best practices and learning from the experiences of pioneers in SOA" said Crowhurst. "I am excited to be discussing Thomson Learning's experiences in SOA with the Forum. "

Forum members and non-members can register for this event on www.weblayers.com

About Christopher Crowhurst

Christopher Crowhurst, Vice President and Chief Architect for Thomson Learning, has responsibility for evolving Thomson Learning's diverse Enterprise Architectures to meet today's dynamic market driven needs. Christopher is a prominent technologist within the Thomson Corporation. He is a member of the Thomson Learning CTO council. As the Chairperson for the Thomson Architecture Council he has a lead role in the creation of the Thomson Reference Architecture which provides an SOA framework for digital information asset sharing across the Thomson Corporation. Christopher is also an Application Development Security Evangelist and spends time traveling to business units raising the awareness of application developers, as well as frequently presenting at conferences and has published many papers in these and other fields. Prior to his current position Christopher spent four years at Thomson Prometric, eventually becoming Vice President of Enterprise Architecture. During his tenure at Thomson Prometric Christopher initiated the migration of Thomson Prometric's architecture from a siloed heterogeneous architecture to a homogenous SOA. Additionally he invented and patented many novel technologies; including information watermarking for IP theft detection, object caching techniques to overcome internet latency and XML schema for information sharing between assessment partners. Prior to Thomson Christopher had a diverse technology background that began with developing and selling commercial software at the age of fourteen. Additional accomplishments include developing cockpit voice recognition systems for jet fighters when he was employed by GEC and, as founder of OBF Laboratories, patenting several medical diagnostic techniques that led to improvements in the diagnosis of many of the worlds leading causes of blindness. Current areas of interest for Christopher are Service Orientated Architecture Governance, Federated Identity management, Web Services Security, and Architecture Visualizations Methodologies. Christopher has a degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Bristol University England, and is currently studying for an MBA through Universitas 21 in Singapore.

About the SOA Forum

WebLayers is the founder and coordinator of The SOA Forum, an exclusive roundtable of senior IT executives and enterprise architects from Fortune 500 companies and Government agencies who are mandated with the challenging mission of creating a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in their enterprises using XML and Web Services Technologies. Current members include over 500 senior IT executives and enterprise architects. For more information about the SOA Forum, see www.weblayers.com/theSOAforum.

About WebLayers

WebLayers (www.weblayers.com) is leading the market for policy-driven Governance for strategic IT initiatives such as SOA, Outsourcing, and Enterprise System Integration. A private company founded in 2002 with venture capital backing, WebLayers is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

WebLayers Center(TM), the company's flagship product, is deployed within Fortune 500 companies and Government agencies who are using it to define their enterprise polices, detect, analyze, and ensure conformance and to govern their most strategic IT initiatives. WebLayers Center's overall design is based on WebLayers' groundbreaking, patent-pending technology for policy-based Governance for the enterprise in a Service Oriented Architecture. For more information about WebLayers, please visit www.weblayers.com.

WebLayers is a member of AFEI (Association for Enterprise Integration), WS-I (Web Services Interoperability Organization), and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).