2006 Press Coverage

30 Jun 2006

Conveyancer improves scalability 

"Countrywide Property Lawyers (CPL) has installed case management and business process automation technology to replace systems installed under a now defunct outsourcing contract."

"It has introduced Visualfiles software built on Progress Software's OpenEdge platform to replace a Microsoft SQL Server system that failed to deliver the required levels of scalability, capacity and customer service."

29 Jun 2006

Boekhandels rolls out RFID 

"Netherlands' largest book retailer; Boekhandels Groep Nederland has deployed RFID from Progress Software to generate labour savings, reduce inventory reconciliation costs, improve stock control, enhance visibuility into supply chain operations, increase shopper 'basket size' and enrich shopper experience."

28 Jun 2006

Books get tagged in 'SmartStores' 

"Orders for books are sent directly from BGN's ordering system to the order system of Centraal Bookhuis, a third party bulk supplier of books in Holland. Centraal Bookhuis applies the RFID tags, packs the books and ships them to the store with an advanced shipping notice."

"BGN is deploying technology from Progress Software – Progress OpenEdge – as the platform for transactions processed by the stores, Apama ESP to process RFID data, Sonic ESB as the store integration backbone and Progress EasyAsk for searches by end users."

27 Jun 2006

From extinction to distinction 

" 'The secret to better network management lies in better process visibility – providing a real-time operational view of services on the network, what services are performing correctly, where load is being experienced and where problems are occurring. It is no longer enough to discover what did happen today. Problems need to be identified immediately or even predicted based on past events and early warning signs and action then taken, either automatically or through human intervention.' Giles Nelson, director of business development, Progress Software"

26 Jun 2006

SOA answers channel SOS 

"Mark Gilliland at Progress suggests that SOA has been unnecessarily 'overcomplicated' by the leading vendors. He offers this simple explanation: 'When one application borrows a business process from another, this is a service, and this is essentially all SOA is.'"

25 Jun 2006

SOA: Who plays, who pays? 

"David Chappell, vice president and chief technology evangelist at Sonic Software, insists that 'Somewhere between 20% to 40% of the companies that we deal with have initiatives to 'SOA-ise' the whole company.' "

" 'I have traveled around the world conducting SOA architecture forums. At them, I always ask for a show of hands. A year ago, I would get 10% to 15% of the audience who said they were actively involved in SOA initiatives; now I get everybody.' "

24 Jun 2006

Sonic mulls standardizing ESB architecture model 

"Progress Software's Sonic Software division is weighing up offering its enterprise service bus (ESB) architecture and reference model as the basis for an industry standard. Sonic published a largely product-neutral architectural definition for an ESB — a useful though not essential element in creating a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and allowing access to Web services-based applications — in 2005."

"Dave Chappell, vice president and chief technology evangelist for Progress, said the company has been informally approached by open standards group OASIS with the idea using the document as the basis for an enterprise service bus definition"

17 Jun 2006

D.C. Hops on the Bus 

Government Computer News profiles Washington, D.C.'s adoption of the Sonic enterprise service bus (ESB). Sonic ESB allow DC to share information to deliver better service to citizens, more quickly identify and respond to public safety threats and reduce crime across the capital region.

"We found we were leaving millions of dollars on the table because we were improperly taxing those properties," Rubinson said. With the new system in place, the two data sources can be reconciled.

31 May 2006

Progress Software Pioneers Retail Automation with First Item-Level RFID and SOA Deployment 

Progress Software announced a significant breakthrough in remote store automation with the deployment of item-level RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) in an SOA (service oriented architecture) suite of applications, which will generate dramatic labor savings, reduce inventory reconciliation costs, improve stock control, enhance visibility into supply chain operations, increase shopper 'basket size' and enrich shopper experience.

30 May 2006

Progress Software uses Retail Automation First with Item-Level RFID and SOA Deployment 

Progress customer, and the Netherlands' largest book retailer, Boekhandels Groep Nederland (BGN), is creating two fully-automated 'SmartStores'. BGN is using item-level RFID to track the movement of individual books. This provides BGN with unique real-time visibility into both their store inventory and the overall supply chain; investment in item-level RFID and SOA reduce costs across the supply chain.

29 May 2006

Strategical SOA by Sonic Software 

Sonic ESB 7.0 features a new development framework based on open source Eclipse tools. It is designed to accelerate the modeling, configuration, testing and deployment of SOA projects across large, distributed environments.

28 May 2006

Progress Software Pioneers Retail Automation with First Item-Level RFID and SOA Deployment 

Progress Software announced a significant breakthrough in remote store automation with the deployment of item-level RFID in an SOA suite of applications, Progress customer, and the Netherlands' largest book retailer, BGN, is launching two new, fully-automated 'SmartStores' that combine item-level RFID tagging and SOA to deliver a tightly integrated 'warehouse-to-consumer' supply chain.

May 2006

Sonic Software Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) selected by BT for managed integration service 

"Stefan Van Overtveldt, vice president and head of practice, BT IT Transformation, said: 'We are delighted to be launching BT Integrate which offers our customers greater business agility, reduces integration management complexity and is faster to deploy than alternative approaches. Over the last 12 months we have worked closely with Sonic Software to deliver a shared vision, choosing them for their functionality, high availability capabilities and line-up of SOA infrastructure products'"

May 2006

Bookseller scores a first with RFID move 

"A Dutch bookseller has become the first large retailer to introduce item-level radio frequency identification tagging across its entire product range."

"[Boekhandels Groep Nederland] BGN said the roll-out had improved staff productivity because the morning stocktake is carried out automatically, with boxes of newly arrived books passing through an RFID scanner tunnel containing a three-dimensional ultra-high-frequency field."

May 2006

Sonic ESB chosen for BT Integrate 

“Sonic Software has just had a rather nice endorsement for its ESB (Enterprise Service Bus): BT Global Services is using it in its BT Integrate distributed integration appliance.”

May 2006

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. Dramatically Improves Speed Of Online Rate And Room Availability Checking With Progress Software Object Database Technology 

"'Progress ObjectStore is an integral part of Starwood's online reservations system,' said Song Park. 'Starwood's high volume, transaction-intensive environment demands extremely fast response times and flexibility. By making ObjectStore part of our service oriented architecture (SOA), which is deployed on Linux (the open source operating system), Starwood has reduced operational costs and improved performance, while maintaining the ability to grow as quickly as business needs require.'"

May 2006

Hotel Chain boosts online operations 

"Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide is replacing legacy reservation systems with applications running on Linux servers to improve its online operations."

"The company, which owns chains including Le Meridien, W Hotels, Sheraton and Four Points, has also deployed Progress ObjectStore Enterprise software to improve its response to online pricing and availability enquiries."

"Persistently required data used for answering queries is stored in the ObjectStore cache and processed many times faster than the time taken to query a disk-based relational database record."

May 2006

Sonic ESB 7.0 

"The latest version, Sonic ESB 7.0, has a new Eclipse-based workbench that accelerates modeling, configuration, testing and deployment of SOA projects across large-scale, distributed environments."

Apr 2006

Next-gen RFID tools expand the market 

"Sophisticated ESP products, such as Progress for RFID from Progress Software and StreamBase Systems’ Stream Processing Engine platform, can tap RFID and additional enterprise systems to build a more thorough event profile. For example, these solutions can easily correlate historic data, such as service-level issues or intrinsic customer value, with real-time RFID-based insight…"

Apr 2006

BT launches appliance-based integration service 

"Sonic Software's ESB integration technology is embedded inside each appliance, and appliances can be clustered, with Sonic's ESB handling virtualization and fault-tolerance across a cluster. "You would need something like a big Tandem machine or an IBM P-Series HACMP to achieve this kind of thing," Overtveldt said [Stefan Van Overtveldt, vice president for IT Transformation at BT Global Services]."

Apr 2006

RFID apps move in-house 

"Cambium-Forstbetriebe, Germany's largest independent forest management company, worked with DABAC, a solutions partner of Progress Software, to create an information system that integrates ERP, legacy forestry systems, and RFID technology. DABAC leveraged Progress' OpenEdge platform for deploying service-oriented business applications and its Sonic messaging backbone, along with the RFID Accelerator real-time data management solution from ObjectStore"

"The DABAC system improves Cambium's yields of finished lumber, reducing lumber inventory, eliminating manual reconciliation between various systems, and accelerating customer payments, says Friemel."

Apr 2006

Marathon techie 

"From Progress' rudimentary beginnings, Alsop has built a company that earned $49 million last year, selling $405 million worth of software for application development, data connectivity, integration and synchronization."

"'I am not saying you have to be a superstar programmer,' Alsop says. 'But if you don't, at the very fundamental level, understand the technology, you are going to have trouble making the key decisions correctly.'"

Apr 2006

Progress claims world first item-level RFID and SOA deployment 

"Business applications vendor Progress Software has claimed a significant breakthrough in remote store automation with the deployment of item-level RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) in a SOA (service oriented architecture) suite of applications."

"The solution, which has been implemented in Dutch book retail chain Boekhandels Groep Nederland (BGN), is starting with two new, fully-automated 'SmartStores' that combine item-level RFID tagging and SOA to deliver a tightly integrated 'warehouse-to-consumer' supply chain."

"'Our new system implements a process that is now completely automatic and real-time, reducing both the cost and time burden on our finance department associated with reconciliation', said Matthijs van der Lely, Chief Executive Officer for Boekhandels Groep Nederland."

Apr 2006

CEP takes events measure 

John Bates, Apama technical director (acquired by Progress Software during April 2005) describes the solution sold to financial organizations like JP Morgan and ABN Amro "This system allows to catch an information and to make an order more rapidly than competitors."

Apr 2006

ESB 

Sonic 7.0 supports several new web services standards like WS Reliable Messaging, WS-Addressing, WS-Security and WS-Policy

Apr 2006

Sonic 7.0 version is based on Eclipse 

Sonic Software, Progress Software subsidiary, presents Sonic 7.0. It integrates a new development workshop based on Eclipse, which allows accelerating modeling, configuration, test and projects deployments on SOA environments.

Apr 2006

Progress Software business expand trough the distribution 

Progress has celebrated its traditional encounter with its partners, Partner Summit, from Spain. Besides showing its plans to continue growing with the distribution channel, the firm has exposed the opportunities that bear fruit thanks to the firm's new reorganization at a European level.

Apr 2006

Open Edge 10.1 nominated for Data TI Awards 

One more year, Data TI summons to this year's Awards, which in this edition are structured in 13 categories. From our headquarters, we have compiled the products displayed in the market during 2005.

Apr 2006

The consolidation of the enterprise applications market continues unabated and now there are also signs that web services market is beginning to coalesce. 

"...integration application maker Progress Software announced a deal to acquire web service management tools maker Actional. Actional will be integrated into Progress's Sonic division, which makes enterprise service bus (ESB) software – a core component of many SOA implementations. Progress Software hopes to position Sonic as a platform-independent SOA infrastructure software maker."

Apr 2006

BT Launches Appliance-Based Integration Service 

"Sonic Software's ESB integration technology is embedded inside each appliance, and appliances can be clustered, with Sonic's ESB handling virtualization and fault-tolerance across a cluster. 'You would need something like a big Tandem machine or an IBM P-Series HACMP to achieve this kind of thing,' Overtveldt said."

Apr 2006

Progress deploys RFID in SOA environment 

"The company has hailed the move as a "significant breakthrough in remote store automation" and claims the technology will help generate dramatic labor savings, reduce inventory reconciliation costs, improve stock control and enhance visibility in supply chain operations."

"'Our investment in item-level RFID and SOA enables us to streamline our processes and reduce costs across the supply chain, improve our profitability and respond more quickly and effectively to shopper requests.'"

Apr 2006

Dutch bookstore chain builds item-level RFID tagged store 

"Netherlands' largest book retailer, Boekhandels Groep Nederland (BGN) have announced the deployment of item-level RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) using a suite of applications from Progress Software Corporation."

"Unlike early generation RFID solutions that tag at the pallet or case-level, BGN is using item-level RFID to track the movement of individual books. This provides BGN with real-time visibility into both their store inventory and the overall supply chain. BGN is deploying technology from four Progress product lines that deliver this retail application: Progress OpenEdge as the platform for all transactions processed by the stores, Apama ESP for processing the RFID data, Sonic ESB as the integration backbone for the store automation applications, and Progress EasyAsk for natural language access to the application by end users."

Apr 2006

The ESB is maturing 

"Sonic's latest release has a number of new features - a new Workbench (based on the open source Eclipse framework, but with a number of Sonic-specific plug-ins as well), an integrated test environment, and advanced web services capability taking advantage of some of the latest WS-* 'standards' that are either with OASIS or still at the early (pre-standard) stage."

"All in all, this new release from Sonic certainly ups the ante…"

Apr 2006

Sonic update aims to speed up SOA projects 

"Sonic Software has extended its enterprise service bus technology with the latest release of the Sonic ESB platform."

"Sonic ESB 7.0 features a new development framework based on the open source Eclipse tools. It is designed to accelerate the modeling, configuration, testing and deployment of SOA projects across large, distributed environments."

Apr 2006

End-to-end system rolled in at PalletForce 

"PalletForce, the palletized network owned by its 88 shareholder member depots, is moving to a full track and trace, electronic proof of delivery, real time transport management system (TMS)."

"The TMS will be hosted by Progress OpenEdge application partner Trans-aXion…"

"It will be offered as a service providing software on demand, via PCs and broadband Internet connections to PalletForce and its members…"

Apr 2006

Adding instant reflexes to your service architecture 

"Event stream processing is a new kind of computing platform that runs streams of data over predefined queries to discover event patterns. Using the concepts of time, location and causality, ESP can detect patterns as they emerge, and which would be impossible to see in a traditional messaging environment."

Apr 2006

BT Global Services Ignites wide-area SOAs 

"BT is hoping to make SOAs easier and more reliable for large organizations to deploy with the launch of a managed service for multi-site SOAs."

"BT Integrate uses a server appliance in each customer location running a special version of Sonic Software's ESB, remotely managed by BT Global Services' staff. The connections between appliances are configured based on service patterns, and take care of all application-level communication between sites."

Apr 2006

Dutch bookseller to use RFID for inventory control 

"The Dutch bookseller Selexyz is opening two new stores that use an RFID inventory management system and natural-language search technology provided by Progress Software Corporation."

"In a country where book prices are set by the government, Selexyz is using the technology to help maximize its margins and increase its market share. Selexyz says it expects to realize:

• Significant savings from reduced shrinkage, lower labor costs, and automatic inventory reconciliation;
• Larger orders, as customers are more easily able to find their selections in the store, as well as receive automatic notifications of special orders via email or through their mobile phone."

Apr 2006

The business agility promised by service oriented architecture has remained tantalizingly out of reach. Until now. 

"...SOA represents an attempt to present an organization's business interactions as modular services. Web services provide the means of linking these services to form fluid applications, with services sourced internally or from customers and partners – or even discovered on the Internet."

"The result is a set of services that maps onto business processes and can be readily assembled and re-assembled as these business processes change. By overcoming the inflexibility of today's monolithic application architectures, SOA will reduce IT costs and make business much more responsive."

Mar 2006

Progress Software 

"Progress Software reported first-quarter revenue up six per cent to $103.9m"

Mar 2006

TCO Season redux: Progress Software weighs in 

Progress Software Corporation, which provides the application infrastructure software used to roll out business applications, is touting a Forrester research study that finds that "Progress Application Partners (APs) reap significantly lower costs when transforming applications built on Progress OpenEdge Platform". Three areas of significant cost savings on the Progress platform were highlighted:

• a 42% lower cost of development;
• a 37% lower cost of deployment;
• and a 48% lower cost of ongoing management;
• greater cost savings were associated with partners that were facing market demands for a more service-oriented approach with diverse integration points.

Mar 2006

Sonic update aims to speed up SOA projects 

"Sonic ESB 7.0 features a new development framework based on the open source Eclipse tools. It is designed to accelerate the modeling, configuration, testing and deployment of SOA projects across large, distributed environments."

Mar 2006

The consolidation of the enterprise applications market continues unabated and now there are also signs that web services market is beginning to coalesce. 

"…integration application maker Progress Software announced a deal to acquire web service management tools maker Actional. Actional will be integrated into Progress's Sonic division, which makes enterprise service bus (ESB) software – a core component of many SOA implementations. Progress Software hopes to position Sonic as a platform-independent SOA infrastructure software maker."

"Progress also acquired Neon Systems, the mainframe application integration vendor, for $68 million in December 2005. It plans to merge Neon with its DataDirect operating business which focuses on standards-based connectivity."

"Neon has concentrated on developing technology that can expose legacy mainframe applications as web services, and Progress will look to build on this as it attempts to position itself as a viable alternative to IBM."

Mar 2006

Real-time PODs in Palletforce's roll-out 

"Real-time proof of delivery scanning, using GPRS data transmission, is part of a wide-ranging new transport management system being rolled out by Palletforce, one of the top four UK pallet networks."

"Integration is being handled by the Sonic ESB ("enterprise service bus"). This aims to connect, mediate and control the underlying services dynamically, and will help smooth the integration of the new system with PalletFORCE members' own internal systems."

"When the new system is fully operational, companies in the network will have immediate access to information on a central database, which is mirrored between three Trans-aXion data centers for resilience and added security."

Mar 2006

Sonic improves ESB technology 

"Although it is acknowledged as a powerful product, Sonic faces competition from consulting giants and systems management platform vendors such as CA and HP."

"However, Sonic chief technology evangelist David Chappell argued, 'It takes a lot of work to understand the scope of an ESB. There are companies that are so entrenched with IBM Global Services that they continue to pay the dollars but we are getting significant wins with customers who want to gain back control.'"

Mar 2006

Sonic Software sets the pace for Enterprise Service Bus market with introduction of Sonic ESB 7.0 

"'Configuring, testing, debugging and deploying processes that run across multiple services, machines and locations is one of the most challenging aspects of an ESB project. The new Sonic Workbench allows these often fragmented processes to be viewed and managed as if they're running on a single machine—an industry first' said Gordon Van Huizen, managing director and vice president of products for Sonic Software."

Mar 2006

Sonic, Iona Rev ESBs 

"…Sonic's Dave Chappell, vice president and chief technology evangelist, told ComputerWire that the release of version 7.0 of its own ESB will make Sonic the first vendor to offer support for four key web services standards: WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Addressing, WS-Security and WS-Policy. While WS-Policy is not actually a standard yet, it is understood that the specification is to be handed to a standards body for ratification any day now."

"…the Sonic ESB Multi-protocol Communication Broker (MCB) provides a scalable and resilient implementation of those services standards -- with dynamic throughput capacity, continuous availability and dynamic routing "across wide-area networks."

Mar 2006

Sonic gets a workbench 

"The major addition to the system is a Workbench environment aimed at raising the level of developer productivity in SOA projects, as well simplifying project lifecycles. It exploits a visual modeling environment as the basic tool for building business process models, providing as a by-product an implicit bridge between traditional applications developers, architects and business analysts."

"The modeling tool is based on Eclipse and Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), which allows the processes to be modeled without having to delve down into defining specific details or dependencies. Once established, the model can then be configured by drilling down into it to define specifics and set dependencies."

25 Feb 2006

Progress Software announces OpenEdge 10.1 availability 

Progress OpenEdge Division, announces Progress OpenEdge platform commercial release. This solution is to simplify SOA development and deployment.

24 Feb 2006

Progress Software promotes Gianandrea Gattinoni as General Director of Progress in Spain and Italy 

Gattinoni has worked as General Director of Progress in Italy for more than two years and now widens his spectrum to include the Spanish market.

24 Feb 2006

Starwood launches an online reservation system 

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worlwide obtains a new online reservation system with real time transaction support. The chosen solution was ObjectStore Enterprise 6.3

24 Feb 2006

Progress ObjectStore moves forward in performance 

Progress Real Time, a division of Progress specializing in administrative solutions, access and data synchronization in real time, has introduced Progress ObjectStore Enterprise 6.3, the latest version of the Progress object database.

24 Feb 2006

Progress acquires Actional 

Progress Software has reached an agreement to acquire Actional Corporation, which specializes in web services for IT systems.

22 Feb 2006

OASIS approves the WS-Security 1.1 Standard 

Progress Software has contributed to the development of this standard.

Feb 2006

Sorting out your SOA 

ZapThink's Schmeltzer recently said: "SOA is gaining momentum as a way to build applications out of reusable composable [sic] component services within an organisation... we have to know what we are doing so that we are not combining services that shouldn't be combined." This quote cuts to the core objective of SOA - to thoughtfully build out and manage reusable services and to make them available to application developers.

Feb 2006

Progress's steady development 

"More an umbrella organization than a single technology brand, Progress has drawn a number of significant acquisitions into its divisional structure in the past few years, including data connectivity specialist DataDirect in 2003. But its recent acquisitions mark a more aggressive approach. At the back end of 2005, it acquired mainframe integration vendor Neon Systems; in January 2006, the company announced a $32 million deal to buy web service management (WSM) tools provider Actional."

Feb 2006

Logistics network uses SOA to create advanced tracking system 

"PalletForce, which operates 2,500 vehicles, will use SOA-based software, broadband links and wireless systems to track and trace pallets, and manage their transportation and delivery. It will also use a wireless network to automate the scanning and weighing process in its warehouses."

"The various processes are orchestrated and controlled by Sonic Software's Sonic enterprise service bus, a central application built on an SOA."

Feb 2006

Progress Software 

"In a move that marks another step in the consolidation of the SOA tools market, Progress Software has announced that it will acquire web services management tools vendor Actional for $32m in cash and stock. Under the deal, Actional will become a product unit of Sonic, the division of Progress that focuses on enterprise service busses and JMS messaging."

Feb 2006

Business up, costs down at Bonhams 

"In the last four years business has grown by 300 per cent and there has been a fourfold increase in data volumes, yet overall IT costs continue to reduce year on year and are significantly less than those of major competitors."

"Progress OpenEdge was selected because of its low IT support costs (in comparison with Oracle or Microsoft) and the tight integration between the Progress OpenEdge development tools, database and Progress WebSpeed tools."

Feb 2006

BAA begins Terminal Five roll-out 

"UK airports operator BAA has begun a £250m IT roll-out at London Heathrow's new Terminal Five."

"Terminal Five is using Sonic ESB as the basis of a service oriented architecture, which will integrate operational systems at the terminal."

"The SOA will focus on managing the interactions and changes of state as millions of messages are triggered between baggage handling, passenger information and flight information systems in relation to real-time events."

Feb 2006

Sonic Software releases Actional 6.0 

"Unlike the previous generations of SOA management, which provide only infrastructure-centric management of discrete services, Actional 6.0 allows organisations to discover end-to-end business processes as they execute individual business transactions, and then to manage the SOA from a business process-centric perspective, as well as manage individual business services."

Feb 2006

Actional adds high level view of SOA governance 

"In its newest release of Looking Glass, Actional Corp claims that it is taking runtime governance of web services to a higher, business process-focused level."

"Looking Glass 6.0 adds what Actional calls "business process visibility." By that it means that it can generate higher levels views of web services at run time by being able to connect the dots."

"Other enhancements include alarms that flag governance breaches, such as rogue services or service requests that are trying to bypass an XML firewall; and "Trust Zones" where the endpoints of various business services can be designated ahead of time as safe sources."

Feb 2006

Progress Software introduces OpenEdge 10.1 

Progress OpenEdge, announces OpenEdge 10.1 version intended to simplify SOA development and deployment.

Feb 2006

BPM : Optimizing work process 

"Today, companies want to optimize their know-how and bring more flexibility to their information systems. BPM tools help them to do it."

Work dimension of BPM projects is the key. "Technical competences are not enough. It is very important to understand the job, strategic stakes, organization and the customer culture. Moreover, the most important is to know which competitive advantage the company wants to build with this tool." Explains Didier Mamma, Progress Software France CEO.

The editor integrates on its article a board which includes all BPM tools: Sonic Software Orchestration Server 6.1 is presented on this board.

Jan 2006

Progress & NEON 

During 2004, Progress purchased Datadirect. At the end of the year 2005, Progress acquired NEON Systems. Progress integrates Neon Systems technologies on Datadirect division to allow it to access to more data sources: IMS/DB, VSAM, Adabas, or CICS and all standards (Oracle, SAL Server, etc.).

Jan 2006

Consolidate growth for Progress 

Since 2002, progress consolidated its annual turnover to 12%. In 2005, it announced an income of $405 million; software licenses accounts for 40% of that figure.

Jan 2006

Progress Software 

Progress Software acquired NEON Systems for $68 million. This company will be a part of Datadirect Technologies, a Progress Software Corporation subsidiary.

Jan 2006

Infrastructure 

In collaboration with Progress Software, CIBF developed a prototype for its new inter-bank exchange platform, which is based on Sonic's bus.

Jan 2006

No Rest for the Query 

"Today more than half of their customers use Siemens Express Query to get the info they need. Express Query (with search engine capability provided by Progress Software subsidiary EasyAsk) was developed in 2001 to provide a user-friendly reporting tool."

"Using a browser-based user interface, Sharp says, end users quickly, easily and securely access their info. 'With numerous navigation options, they may type in business questions in ordinary English, build queries through drop-down boxes and a point-and-click database tree, or run pre-saved reports with the click of their mouse,' she says."

"End users can teach their language to the EasyAsk dictionary, the heart of the app, further increasing the conversational ability of the search tool."

Jan 2006

Progress announces a new ObjecStore 6.3 version 

Progress Software's Real Time Division announces Objecstore Enterprise version 6.3, their latest version of their object database.

Jan 2006

Progress Software Corporation Announces Acquisition of Actional Corporation 

"Every enterprise making the transition to SOA can greatly benefit from Actional's products, whether they are initiating their first project, or have fully deployed a large-scale SOA production environment. Actional's SOA visibility and run-time governance ensure alignment between IT and business, by providing real-time monitoring and analysis of business processes, and by employing security and policies to manage and optimise any enterprise SOA implementation. Actional's technology provides these capabilities with extremely low overhead and minimal impact on system performance."

Jan 2006

Why Progress bought Actional 

"...Actional's message interceptor does its work in as little as 25 to 50 microseconds, compared to milliseconds of latency with competitor products."

"'I was astounded in the difference in implementations in what seemed to be similar products from a handful of vendors,'" said Progress Software's CTO Gordon Van Huizen. "'In terms of robustness of the architecture, the depth of infrastructure in the Actional stuff is vastly superior.'"

Jan 2006

Progress Software to buy Actional 

"Actional WSM technologies add system and process-level visibility as well as policy enforcement to Sonic's product mix, allowing Sonic to address a much wider range of customer needs as they implement their SOA strategies," said Greg O'Connor, president, Sonic Software.

"The Actional business is the latest in a spate of tactical acquisitions by Progress Software over the past year, and follows the takeover of middleware outfit Neon Systems and algorithmic trading firm Apama."

Jan 2006

What a difference a year in IT makes 

"According to Mark Gilliland, managing director of Progress Software, the major development in 2005 was the advance of the service-oriented architecture (SOA), for which he predicts a bright future. 'It is enabling a shift in positioning – almost a role reversal – of the mega vendors versus the mid market best-of-bread application providers. While Microsoft and other giants realized that one size does not fit all and hired industry experts and bought vertical solutions to build out their portfolios for this sector, the mid-market application vendors were focused on the opportunities that SOA provides them for moving up the value chain.'"

Jan 2006

Progress Buys Actional 

"Actional has developed a product line that enforces IT policies while an application is running. For example, Actional's software can tell IT administrators if an individual program is meeting performance requirements and ensure that security policies are being followed."

Jan 2006

Progress Software buys Actional 

"Importantly, the acquisition of Actional strengthens Progress's hand against rivals such as IBM. In October 2005, IBM inked a partnership deal with Actional, primarily because IBM was interested in Actional's ability to provide management capabilities within mainframe environments."

Jan 2006

Progress buys Actional to boost SOA provision 

"Progress Software is acquiring web services management software company Actional to extend its business applications portfolio, including improved service-orientated architecture (SOA) provision."

"Progress said it is buying Actional for $32m (£18m) and that Actional will be merged into its Sonic Software operating unit."

Jan 2006

PalletFORCE to improve track and trace with Progress OpenEdge application from Trans-aXion and SOA infrastructure in major investment to revamp IT 

"Trans-aXion has created a modern and innovative solution designed from the outset for a service-oriented architecture (SOA), developed entirely using the Progress OpenEdge business application platform and deployed on the OpenEdge database. Integration of services, is handled by the Sonic ESB, (enterprise service bus) which dynamically connects, mediates and control services and their interactions and enables easy integration of TMS with the PalletFORCE members' own internal systems."

"'The Progress/Trans-aXion combination gives us the best of both world's,'" says Jayne Hawkes, "'– cutting edge business applications from a specialist and innovator who understands our business backed by the reliability and stability of a global technology provider.'"

Jan 2006

Progress secures a piece of the Actional 

Tom Ryan, chief executive of Actional, said: "Progress has created an impressive portfolio of sophisticated and robust SOA technologies. We're excited to join forces and create the dominant SOA infrastructure solution in today's rapidly expanding SOA market."

Jan 2006

Progress Buys Actional 

"In a move that marks another step in the consolidation of the SOA tools market, Progress Software Corp has announced that it will acquire web services management tools vendor Actional Corp for $32m in cash and stock."

"Actional brings two product families to the table. They include Looking Glass, an agent-based tool for monitoring and managing web services deployed internally on an ESB, and SOAPstation, a broker for monitoring and managing interactions of web services that are deployed remotely, outside a bus."

Jan 2006

All present and correct? 

"The challenge, according to [Ken] Rugg, is delivering solutions that integrate with the trading applications to ensure data is where it needs to be, in the correct format and at the right time. 'The data management infrastructure also needs to be sufficiently flexible to enable new trading strategies as quickly as the traders devise them' "