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ATLANTA --(Business Wire)-- Procuri, the global leader in On Demand Supply Management solutions, today announced that KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY), one of the nation's largest bank-based financial services companies, selected Procuri TotalSource to streamline and automate its strategic sourcing processes.

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With TotalSource enhancing their sourcing processes, the company expects to achieve an incremental 5 percent savings on goods and services sourced enterprise-wide and a 25 percent time savings. After an extensive two-year market evaluation of sourcing providers, KeyBank selected Procuri based on its On Demand model, reputation for listening and implementing customer feedback, and its cost effective, Software-as-a-Service pricing structure.

"We are excited to use Procuri's TotalSource solution to enable our organization to achieve strategic sourcing excellence," said Deborah Manos, EVP director of Corporate Sourcing and Real Estate for KeyBank. "Procuri will allow our organization to easily and quickly conduct sourcing events, gain control over our sourcing processes through standardized templates and achieve a consistent, repeatable process."

KeyBank will immediately leverage Procuri TotalSource to speed and optimize sourcing for renovation materials and services, such as carpet, paint, and repair services in KeyCenters across the U.S. Procuri TotalSource will enable KeyBank to make best-value sourcing decisions that deliver an optimal mix of global suppliers, products and services in any spend category.

"We are very happy to have KeyBank as a new Procuri customer. Their selection of Procuri is yet more proof that On Demand strategic sourcing has an immediate and very real impact on businesses," said Mark Morel, Procuri's president and CEO. "TotalSource's rapid deployments, ability to standardize and automate processes, and numerous advantages of the On Demand model allows customers to quickly gain savings and a competitive advantage."

About KeyCorp

Cleveland-based KeyCorp (NYSE: KEY) is one of the nation's largest bank-based financial services companies, with assets of approximately $95 billion. Key companies provide investment management, retail and commercial banking, consumer finance, and investment banking products and services to individuals and companies throughout the United States and, for certain businesses, internationally.

About Procuri Inc.

Procuri leads the On Demand Supply Management industry with more than 350 customers of all sizes, industries, geographies and the highest customer-retention rate. Customers like Georgia-Pacific, Sun Microsystems, U.S. Steel, Baxter Healthcare, Cadbury Schweppes and National City Corp leverage Procuri solutions to negotiate best-value supply relationships and drive continuous improvements in performance and cost. Procuri's On Demand solutions for spend analysis, supplier management, strategic sourcing, contract management and compliance are comprehensive, cost effective, fast to deploy, and always available. For more information, call 1-877-360-1600 or visit www.procuri.com. All copyright, registration and trademarks for Procuri, Inc., Procuri, Procuri TotalSource, Procuri TotalSupplier, TotalContracts and Procuri TotalAnalytics. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

FREEPORT, Texas, Oct. 2 -- CIBER, Inc. today announced its Federal Solutions Division has been awarded the Port Freeport, Texas, Waterside Perimeter Protection Project, valued at $2.3 million. Port Freeport chose CIBER's Harbor Management and Security (HMS) solution to fulfill its unique needs for a shared system for regional port users. The system delivers both a port security, port safety, Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) and a port management system, all rolled into one integrated solution.

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(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20010927/CBRLOGO)
"CIBER's Harbor Management Security (HMS) system was chosen over the other competitors because of its unique design and approach," said Al Durel, Port Freeport's Director of Operations. "The system can do as much for Port Freeport's business operations and management of the port as it does to improve both safety and security within the port. We felt CIBER's system was far above the others we evaluated because of its unique multi-mission capabilities and integrated design. It is the only system we have seen that gives us a state-of-the-art shared regional waterside perimeter security solution for the region's facilities in one integrated system. The system simultaneously provides us the technology and business process improvements to keep up with the significant growth in Port Freeport's commerce."

The Port Freeport contract is significant in part because the port is adding large new liquid natural gas (LNG) facilities which will soon be in operation. Dow Chemical, BASF and other petrochemical companies operate facilities in the port, and they will benefit from the shared system CIBER will implement.

Earlier this year, CIBER completed a similar integrated multi-mission maritime system for the Port of Lake Charles, La., the largest LNG port in the U.S. That system was the first of its kind that offered a shared, multi- mission, integrated technological and business approach to protecting a port region and providing a type of Maritime Domain Awareness for a large region comprising hundreds of users across dozens of local, state, federal and private organizations.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) also implemented a national maritime security project using CIBER's HMS system in the last year.

"Port Freeport's goal with the new port security system is to provide one integrated and shared regional system that capitalizes on our existing technologies," said Port Freeport's Security Manager Rick Benavidez. "The current video surveillance system and wireless network will be integrated with CIBER's new technologies, such as intelligent radar; three modes of secure command and control (C2) situational displays (for command centers, mobile patrol boats, and authorized web based external users), automatic identification system (AIS) base stations, patrol boat tracking, interoperable communications, and web services to form one shared regional common operating picture. All this, coupled with the many other data management and data/sensor fusion, alert distribution, and post incident replay and analysis features within our new HMS system from CIBER will be shared across local, state, and federal agencies in the port region."

Benavidez added, "First responders, the port's public and private facilities, pilots, and other approved entities can benefit from information provided by the system, too. In the last two rounds of port security grants, the Department of Homeland Security has focused on Maritime Domain Awareness and waterside perimeter security. The HMS system meets and exceeds the objective outlined by DHS."

"CIBER prides itself on dedicating our people and resources to contribute to enhancing our nation's port security. At the same time, we provide a mature, integrated design that leverages the same technology to make a single port or groups of ports more competitive and to ready these ports for the huge growth in commercial activity all ports will be experiencing in the coming decades," said Wally Birdseye, President of CIBER's Federal Solutions Division. "We are proud to have been selected over so many high-powered competitors for this project and will stand by Port Freeport as a partner to make their vision a reality."

Port Freeport is the 13th largest port in the U.S. in foreign cargo tonnage, and 23rd in the U.S. in total tonnage, accommodating 33.9 million tons of cargo per year. It employs more than 11,000 people and has an economic impact on the region of more than $9 billion annually.

About CIBER, Inc.
CIBER, Inc. is a pure-play international system integration consultancy with superior value-priced services for both private and government sector clients. CIBER's global delivery services are offered on a project or strategic staffing basis, in both custom and enterprise resource planning (ERP) package environments, and across all technology platforms, operating systems and infrastructures. Founded in 1974 and headquartered in Greenwood Village, Colo., the company now serves client businesses from over 60 U.S. offices, 20 European offices and 4 offices in Asia. Operating in 18 countries, with 8,000 employees and annual revenue of nearly $1 billion, CIBER and its IT specialists continuously build and upgrade clients' systems to "competitive advantage status." CIBER is included in the Russell 2000 Index and the S&P Small Cap 600 Index. CIBER, ALWAYS ABLE. http://www.ciber.com/

Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements
Statements contained in this release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, as discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CIBER undertakes neither intention nor obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. CIBER and the CIBER logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of CIBER, Inc. Copyright(C) 2006.

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20010927/CBRLOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

CIBER, Inc.

CONTACT: Media Relations, Diane Stoner, [email protected], or InvestorRelations, Jennifer Matuschek, [email protected], both of CIBER, Inc.,+1-303-220-0100

Web site: http://www.ciber.com/

DRAPER, Utah --(Business Wire)-- NextPage today announced the immediate availability of a study detailing research into the deployment and enforcement of document retention and deletion policies. According to the study, jointly created with CXO Media, enterprises in diverse industries are experiencing a large gap between theory and practice when it comes to document retention and disposal.

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The research study, based on the responses of 108 IT professionals, indicates that only 62 percent of the companies surveyed have a document retention policy in place. Of that 62 percent, only 31 percent actively enforce the policy and 61 percent responded that fewer than half of their employees are adhering to their published retention policies. Given that 80 percent of corporate documents typically exist on individual hard drives, according to another CXO Research Services Group study, document retention and deletion polices are failing to account for most of an organization's documents.

"The overwhelming majority of document retention polices are not working where they are needed most, at the desktop," said Darren Lee, President and Chief Executive Officer, NextPage. "We see this failure primarily as a result of two factors: first, end-users are simply unaware of the number of copies and different versions of company documents residing on their hard drives, in their email archives or on removable storage devices; and second, adherence to many document retention and deletion policies requires help from technology and end-users haven't had any tools to make compliance to the policy possible."

Highlights of the study include:

-- Only 30 percent of respondents had actually implemented technology to facilitate the retention and disposal of documents across their enterprises

-- One-third of the companies surveyed did NOT have a document retention policy in effect

-- The two areas of document retention that organizations felt they were weakest were:

-- Implementing a standard document retention policy for the organization

-- Policy-based document disposal (destroying documents according to a standard policy)

"Most document retention solutions in the market today address policy enforcement in a centralized setting," said Mr. Lee. "However, these solutions do not address the decentralized reality of enterprise documents that are created, shared, edited and stored at the edge of the network. Enterprises would benefit significantly from implementing edge technologies that integrate with centralized storage systems."

Enterprises interested in a copy of the study can visit www.nextpage.com/cio.

To lower retention-related risks, NextPage recommends that businesses assess their level of risk, develop practical and unified document retention policies, and implement effective tools, including new and emerging technologies, and procedures to enforce them. NextPage recently introduced an easy-to-use online risk assessment tool that will help organizations determine the level of risk associated with their document retention needs and policies. The assessment tool, available at www.nextpage.com/assessment, can be completed in less than five minutes and generates a preliminary risk score based on how the organization answers selected questions. Organizations with higher risk scores can request a more in-depth analysis from NextPage.

NextPage offers strategies for companies to implement efficient document management that functions within the way end-users normally create, save, send and delete documents. This approach dramatically increases end-user compliance, helping companies more efficiently manage their documents and effectively lower their document retention risk levels.

About NextPage

NextPage delivers powerful document tracking services that enable enterprises to manage and control the risk of Microsoft Office documents on the desktop. With the patent pending document tracking technology enterprises can securely track the more than 7.5 Billion Office documents that are sent as e-mail attachments, stored on users' desktops and removable media or saved to centralized servers. The NextPage 2 Document Retention service increases document retention compliance, as the only product that lets organizations apply retention policies to versions on the desktop by purging working copies and posting final versions to a central server for archival and lifecycle management. The NextPage products reduce the cost of document eDiscovery, prevent wasted time tracking down document versions and reduce the risk of documents. For more information, visit www.nextpage.com or email us at [email protected]

NextPage is a registered trademark of NextPage. All other names are used for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. --(Business Wire)-- MX Logic Inc., a leading managed services provider of easy-to-use email and Web defense solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, is now offering a managed Web filtering and threat protection service to customers. The MX Logic(SM) Web Defense Service marks a major expansion in the company's service portfolio by providing businesses with Web content filtering and protection from spyware, malicious code, viruses, keyloggers and phishing attacks.

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According to IDC's 2005 Enterprise Security Survey, viruses and worms continue to be the most serious threats facing corporations today, but spyware has rapidly climbed the priority list of enterprise security threats and now ranks as the second most serious threat for corporations.(1) In addition, data gathered from the MX Logic(R) Threat Center proves that malware infections no longer result strictly from reckless Web browsing, but can also result from interaction with seemingly safe websites.

Based on industry-leading technology from Blue Coat Systems(R), Inc. (Nasdaq:BCSI), the Web Defense Service comprises two core offerings - Threat Control and Content Control.

Threat Control: Email and Web threats are converging, so customers need a comprehensive solution that protects their networks from spyware, malicious code, viruses and phishing attacks -- regardless of entry point. Threat Control utilizes Blue Coat SG appliances to provide superior protection from these threats and helps ensure that surfing the Web is a safe experience.

Content Control: According to IDC, 30 percent to 40 percent of all Web surfing in the workplace is not business related. To help businesses counter the risks and unproductive use of employee time associated with Web browsing, the Web Defense Service includes Content Control. Using Blue Coat WebFilter, Content Control blocks over 50 unique categories of content and has a patented dynamic real-time rating system that can categorize newly created sites "on the fly," so that end users are always protected. In addition, a patented "safe-search" option closes a common loophole in URL filters by forcing leading search engines to remove inappropriate content from returned search results.

Businesses may purchase Threat Control and Content Control either individually or combined as Total Control. Additionally, businesses have the option of combining MX Logic's Web Defense Service with the Email Defense Service.

"Our partnership allows us to leverage Blue Coat's expertise and technology in Web defense with MX Logic's understanding of the SMB market," said Steve Renda, senior vice president, Sales and Marketing, MX Logic. "This allows small and medium-sized businesses to enjoy enterprise grade Web filtering and threat protection in an easy-to-use, affordable managed service."

"Blue Coat appliances provide visibility, control and acceleration of Web content and applications, protecting users and network resources while enabling an optimized experience," said Craig Hicks-Frazer, vice president, service providers, Blue Coat Systems. "Working together with MX Logic, we can combine our solutions for Web security and control with their existing user and administrative tools and reporting to enable a managed security service for the market."

One of the most notable features of the Web Defense Service is its user interface within the MX Control Console(SM) which is uncommonly simple for system administrators to configure and manage, yet granular and robust enough to track and provide critical details about Web use in the work place that managers demand. The MX Control Console is also the entry point for managing the MX Logic(R) Email Defense Service, so customers who purchase both services can enjoy a single, integrated console from which to manage user accounts, configure settings, and interact with Web and email threat reports.

"Before we started using the MX Logic Web Defense Service, an average of 20 percent of our computers and employees would suffer downtime as a result of spyware or a virus on any given week," said Kirk Morschauser, IT manager and systems administrator for Ademino & Associates, a Web Defense Service beta customer. "Because the Web Defense Service is keeping our computers clean, I've gained back an extra two to five hours a week that I was using to clean computers, and employees are not suffering malware-related interruptions in their workdays."

The Web Defense Service adheres to the company's commitment to ease of use by providing flexible pricing, no setup fees, month-to-month contracts, and unified invoicing. Please contact the company at 877.MXLOGIC or [email protected] for specific pricing or product information.

About MX Logic

MX Logic is a leading managed security services provider of email and Web security services developed specifically to meet the unique needs of small and medium-sized businesses. With patented technology and commitment to creating the most user-friendly security solutions in the industry, MX Logic is the appropriate choice for businesses that want enterprise-grade service and performance without enterprise-level complexity and cost. Distinctions in 2006 include Security Products Guide's Global Excellence Customer Trust Award in Email Managed Service and SC Magazine's award for Best Email Managed Service. MX Logic services are distributed through an extensive partner network. For more information, visit www.mxlogic.com.

About Blue Coat Systems

Blue Coat secures Web communications and accelerates business applications across the distributed enterprise. Blue Coat's family of appliances and client-based solutions -- deployed in branch offices, Internet gateways, end points, and data centers -- provides intelligent points of policy-based control, enabling IT organizations to optimize security and accelerate performance between users and applications. Blue Coat has installed more than 25,000 appliances worldwide and is ranked #1 by IDC in the Secure Content and Application Delivery market. Blue Coat is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and can be reached at (408) 220-2200 or www.bluecoat.com.

1. IDC, Enterprise Security Survey 2005, Doc #34561, Sec 2005.

(Microscope Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Anyone wishing to buy shares in Dell from an on-line trading web site will be met by the warning: ?Dell is delinquent in its regulatory filings.? For a channel that has struggled against the spectre of direct and channel-oriented vendors wishing to ape the model, the warning has sparked hopes of an indirect renaissance.

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Keeping out of the headlines has been impossible for Dell in recent weeks, often disproving the adage that any news is good news. A delay in filing its second quarter results with the SEC has forced Dell into a meeting with the NASDAQ stock exchange with the prospect of being delisted very real.

But one swallow does not make a summer, and accounting issues and a battery recall scandal have affected other vendors too. The question most pertinent to Dell and the channel is whether cracks are appearing in the direct model. Only last week Canalys CEO Steve Brazier forecast a decline in the overall volume of direct sales in Europe (see MicroScope, 25 September) but it still remains unclear how indirect sales are set to thrive on the back of this.

Looking at some of the UK?s largest resellers and integrators provides a glimpse of sunlight between the cracks, but the picture is blurry. Computacenter?s first half results for 2006 (see MicroScope, 18 September) were branded ?encouraging? by Gartner. Pre-tax profits soared by 76.7 per cent, mainly based on services business growth, but sales fell to ?1.1bn, down from ?1.15bn the year before.

At the time, Computacenter chief executive Mike Norris told this magazine that while the product side of the business was lower margin, and PC prices had fallen dramatically, the company had a ruthless and efficient focus on the cost base in order to be profitable.

Profitability here becomes a better barometer of success than sales ? Dell too is struggling to turn around a fall in profits. Sales figures may well have risen quarter on quarter (the company reports a six per cent rise in the year to date) but a 35 per cent decline in profitability to date only fuels Norris? belief that a ruthless and efficient cost base is required to be profitable.

Dell too recognises these cracks, with CEO Kevin Rollins using similar language when reporting on his company?s fall in profits: ?Key actions include accelerating cost initiatives, increasing investments in service and support, and better pricing management.?

Speaking to MicroScope, Canalys senior analyst Alastair Edwards said while the Computacenter results had seemed to pick up, the big question was whether the likes of Computacenter or SCC could become ?a true service-led business?.

?We are starting to see transitions for the channel, particularly in the enterprise space, where companies move away from being dependent on revenues driven by hardware sales to become application and services-led businesses. The possibility is that you will be well positioned to drive growth, but only if you are willing as a reseller to make the investment.?

As Computacenter?s largest rival privately held SCC has not published any results since the year to 31 March 2004, answering those questions becomes a little harder. Morse is often compared to Computacenter, but as the former has just one-third of Computacenter?s annual sales the micro-economic influences may be the same but the macro-economic influences are not.

The height of summer marked Morse?s full year end and, as ever, it justified any published figures with the well-publicised statement that over the past few years the business has made the transition ?from a pure IT hardware reseller into a consulting, technology and support company. This transition has meant reductions in revenues, with increasing gross margin from services?.

True profits have also increased at Morse (by 14 per cent) given the decline in revenues (by four per cent) and the sale of some of its European reselling businesses. If any trend can be drawn by comparing Computacenter to Morse it could be that enterprise reselling drives profits with the right business model but at reduced volumes. Such a trend is backed up by on-line giant Insight, where revenues also fell in its UK operations (by two per cent) and profits rose (by 1.4 per cent) during the second quarter of 2006.

But immediately disproving that theory last week was Compel, which has grown both revenues and profits during the past six months of trading. But that caveat comes with a disclaimer; Compel sold its loss-making hardware business to SCC as long ago as March 2001.

?Markets change, and you have to be prepared to change with those markets,? said Compel chief executive Neville Davis. ?You have to have a sure strategy underpinning where you want to go. Fundamentally, I think we have got that right.?

The channel?s largest dealers and their competition in the shape of Dell certainly won?t walk away from enterprise product reselling as Compel did five years ago, but all their chances of success, despite the decline of direct sales, point to a ruthless market in coming months.

Tough at the top: enterprise reseller woes

January 2006

? Management buy-out at Computacenter is terminated after a year of profit troubles and restructure rebates by Hewlett-Packard.

February 2006

? Dell calls time on multi-million pound service deal with Phillips, which claims the one-size-fits-all model is not working.

? HP performs a U-turn and creates a list of indirect enterprise and corporate customer PC accounts, leaving all other companies not on the list open to approaches from the vendor?s direct salesforce.

July 2006

? Following the sale of its German and Austrian businesses Morse has to reiterate again that it has no interest in selling the reselling side of its UK operation. Last year it described such talk as ?bunkum?.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

(Microscope Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Cisco?s greatest router rival, Juniper, is looking to position itself as a network security leader as it rolls out an updated version of its secure service gateway portfolio.

Fresh off the back of last month?s strategic partnership signing with security software giant Symantec which will see both vendors integrate their security portfolio for enterprise customers ? particularly in the UTM space ? Juniper has updated its IP VPN and firewall range and is already shipping the new kit through distributors.

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Anton Grashion, EMEA security strategist at Juniper, told MicroScope the expanded security portfolio resulted in a ?nice channel model?.

?If you are going to bring routing and security together you had better have a pretty good solution when it comes to management and maintenance ? our partners will have been selling routing [as well as security] anyway so they are used to bringing lots of different things together.?

The intention to expand Juniper?s security portfolio and market share comes from the cross-sell and the up-sell opportunities on Juniper?s installed router base ? a strategy Cisco has pursued strongly since the 2004 launch of the Integrated Service Router (ISR), which combined security, voice and video onto the same appliance.

Grashion said: ?These are security devices first and foremost. The Cisco ISR is a router with security added on.

?Routing is not a massively different problem: it is just the approach to how you do it and we did it differently. Security has much more of a predator/prey relationship. You have to make a more responsive network to be competitive,? he added.

Being competitive at Juniper also includes the Symantec tie-up ? whose CEO John Thompson said of the reasoning behind the partnership: ?Our customers are demanding a more comprehensive approach to security and management, with more attention being placed on expanding the ability to control networks.?

At a corporate level Juniper remains under investigation by the SEC for delays in its regulatory filings following a stock options scandal.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

(Microscope Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Hewlett-Packard will increase its internal sales team in EMEA by 200 heads to generate corporate leads and integrate more closely with partners amid concerns from senior management that resellers are not chasing enough new business.

?One of my fears is that the channel is not bringing in enough new business,? Jos Brenkel, vice-president of the solutions partner organisation at HP EMEA told 650 partners from the region at its Preferred Partner Conference.

So far HP has recruited 160 staff to augment and extend its reach into the corporate and larger mid-market accounts but they will not purely sell direct, HP insisted, they will work closely with partners.

?We will be more focused on hunting,? said Olaf Swantee, senior vice-president of value sales for the technology solutions group HP EMEA.

?We found there were areas that we did not cover well so?we are in the process of hiring over 200 people. What does that mean for partners? It will create more opportunities,? he said.

The areas include the financial services and energy sectors and Swantee called on resellers to develop ?key? vertical applications.

As well as creating specific solutions, he advised resellers to focus on software to manage IT estates ? the largest IT cost to businesses ? and use HP?s programmes that attacked rivals.

Dealers involved in the ?Refuse to Lose? scheme had shown win rates of up to 85 per cent said Swantee, and one area he highlighted for specific attention was the platform to migrate users from Sun Microsystems.

Last year, HP developed a range of tools to help users move from Sun servers to its Integrity and Proliant products (see MicroScope, 12 September).

Rob Campbell, managing director at HP enterprise partner Kavanagh, said winning new business was its ?meat and drink? and resellers with a high level of pre-sales, technical sales and analytical sales need not be fearful of the vendor?s strategy.

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One reseller source said HP wanted partners to integrate with its direct salesforce and dedicate more resources to the vendor. ?If you have IBM and Sun teams, HP is concerned of the ability to switch sell?but the channel?s selling point is its ability to appear independent.?

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

(Microscope Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Array Networks has revealed it will have to keep a close eye on its distribution channel after admitting the appointment of Wick Hill might mean it is over-distributed.

The SSL VPN vendor added Wick Hill to its UK distributor roster last week (see MicroScope, 25 September) to work alongside Bell Microproducts and Fresh Egg.

Wick Hill has been charged with growing the vendor?s mid-range to enterprise business, while Fresh Egg focuses on SMEs and Bell has a pan-European deal across the board.

But speaking to MicroScope, Kevin Thiele, regional sales director for Northern Europe at Array, admitted it ?may now have too many distributors so I am going to watch the situation very closely over the next couple of months?.

?If there is too much overlap [between the distributors] I will take steps to address that, but hopefully there is enough space for all three,? he added.

Ian Kilpatrick, chairman at Wick Hill, added the distributor would be looking for resellers within its existing base to take on the Array products, as well as recruiting new enterprise-focused partners. ?When we get leads from enterprise customers we hope to be able to work with their incumbent resellers, even if we currently don?t have a relationship with them,? he added.

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Duncan Hume, security head at Bell Microproducts, said three distributors was probably the limit for Array and he ?would not want it to go any higher?.

But he added the company had not experienced any conflict with Fresh Egg and did not typically compete with Wick Hill in other areas. ?We all have our own reseller bases and so far we have not crossed paths with Fresh Egg. Although we do hear about Wick Hill, we do not usually compete.?

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

(Microscope Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
For a company that has lacked predictability in its move to direct sales and has, by its own admission, has been less than easy to do business with, Hewlett-Packard is once again asking partners to display undying loyalty to the brand.

A year after launching the Preferred Partner Programme (PPP), HP seized the chance at its EMEA reseller Smart Energy conference to warn those not hitting growth targets or undertaking specialisations that their time iwas up (see last week?s MicroScope).

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Conversely, the vendor promised resellers that were certifying staff for 2007 and matching or exceeding growth targets, including those for attach rates, that it would show loyalty in return through increased compensation, lead generation, co-marketing activities and go- to- market tools.

The loyalty mantra was best encapsulated by the creation of an elite Gold tier in the PPP, to which HP will invite the top 10ten to 20 per cent of the current 4,800 accredited resellers across EMEA.

Though exact details are to be defined in November, HP will expecwant Gold members to comfortably up-sell and cross-sell, use co?-marketing to drive demand, exploit the Smart Tools suite and have Certified Professionals.

Tom Yeates, sales director for corporate and enterprise at HP?sthe solutions partner organisation (SPO) EMEA at HP, told partnerssaid: ?[We also] expect a large share of your business,? Tom Yeates, sales director for corporate and enterprise at HP?s solutions partner organisation (SPO) EMEA, told partners. ?[Resellers] committed to HP will get increased compensation and joint customer engagement.?

Gold partners will be appointed from June 2007 and all should be up and running at the start of 2008.

Edward Kenny, Computacenter business unit director for end user hardware, said it was a natural progression for PPP.

?We would be very keen to be part of it,? he said., ?Ooverall, HP has talked about loyalty and the Gold [tier] is a way of encapsulating that.?

When asked about HP?s practice of circumventing resellers in certain enterprise markets, he added t: ?The direct business ?is what it is? and insisted there waswe have ?less conflict now than we did in the past.?.

Others were not so sure about the benefits of a Gold level status, voicing and revealed concerns that committing a higher proportion of sales to one vendor would dilute their agnosticism.

Impartiality is not the only concerns resellers have about the Gold PPP, as they have also warned that an additional tier cwould weaken the remaining scheme. B but Sean Gallagher, development and sales programme director for SPO at HP EMEA, didid not expect this outcome, claiming the.

?The objective wais ?not to dilute the programme but to have an internal deck of partners dedicated to HP.?.

However,

But Abdul Terry, marketing director at Equanet, was awaiting more details with some scepticism. ?We are not convinced it has real benefits apart from short- term compensation forto being a Gold partner,? he said..?

Some resellers claimesaid the creation ofcreating a new tier offeringing extra compensation packages increased complexities of the PPP and demonstrated the paradoxical strategy employed by HP. ?It wants a smaller, quality channel with more loyal partners, but with everyone in it,? said one source.

Partner consolidation does appears to be on the radar at HP but the vendor claimed to have given resellers had been given all the opportunities to fall in line during the plast year.

HP?s Gallagher said its remaining partners that remain in 2007 could expect improvements in OPG turnaround times ? which in 2007- which used to take up to four days on average before the Smart Suite was introduced this year ?? and lead generation in 2007.

?[With regards to special] pricing, if we could have fixed this a year ago we would have, but Smart Quote was tougher [to implement] than we thought and we were naive to think we could roll it out quickly,? Gallagher said.

In the UK, HP receives 800 requests a month for quotes, half of which are turned around within four hours, but that percentage needs to increase to be between 80 andto 90 per cent, said Gallagher, adding ?over the next three months you will see turnaround times would get better in the next three monthsgetting better?, he added.

On demand creation, HP is piloting Smart Leads in Italy and Austria and heGallagher said qualifying leads and passing them to the correct partners was ?not as easy as it sounds [but] next year we will roll out the machinery to help with that?. HP is piloting Smart Leads in Italy and Austria.

The Smart Finance leasing programme is also expectedon the way in the next year, which and Gallagher said this would help accelerate sales and as customers ?were not getting stuck on the capital price, it increase the average sales order?.

In the plast year, HP has spent $200m on reseller compensations across EMEA, and partners whichthat show ?loyalty? in 2007 can expect increases in pay for results (PFR) for attach, receiving an extra 15 per cent for hitting 80 per cent of the target and a further 15 per cent for 100 per cent.

There awere fewerless compensation schemes for resellers to manage than 12 months ago, said according to Gallagher, but he is aware that s said. ?[But] I know some of [resellers] don?t like the [PFR] targets so it isand we are ?trying to improve the quality of target setting.?.

Loay Lawrence, commercialsales and marketing director at Vohkus, said attach rate calculation was ?getting easier? but he would like to see more branding of the PPP to users.

Having spent $100m on co?-marketing since last September, with on 10,000 individual campaigns benefiting, HP willwill make more funds available, althoughbut resellers will not be able to use the money as they did in the past.

?It is not your Ggod- given right to receive marketing funds? the more measurable [your campaign] the more money we will invest,? said Gallagher said. HP has employed a marketing agency MCA to customise promotions for large resellers.

For all its faults, HP is at least consistent in wanting to work with fewer committed partners

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

(Microscope Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
IBM is to bring its Global Services division into direct competition with a large swathe of the indirect channel with a plan to push commoditised service packages into an already crowded market for networking and communications.

Big Blue?s Global Services division restructured last week, leading to the creation of an integrated communications services unit. Initially it will sell two standardised service packages, based on networking and IP telephony, with uniform global pricing to enterprise and SMB customers.

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The prospect of commodity services, in a mature but project-driven market, and competing directly with IBM, caused the channel to question the rationale behind the desire to sell such ?service products?.

Russell Bolan, chief executive at Dimension Data Europe, argued: ?[IBM] is trying to position itself as a true convergence player but you cannot be experts across the whole spectrum. There are very few companies that have not got [convergence offerings] now. It has got to a point where IBM is putting services on a price list. With all due respect, we have been doing that for years.

?[But] it is difficult to commoditise service and there is no one who can build a simple, mass-processed service to the client. Every client has complex needs.?

Tom Kelly, UK managing director at Logicalis ? an IBM premier partner and networking and convergence specialist ? insisted: ?This is not about rebooting a server; clients expect voice systems to work and I do not think you can productise that kind of service.?

He urged the vendor to look at partners? skills in this area and consider how IBM could assist them in providing networking and communications services.

One source added: ?I cannot believe [IBM?s] arrogance and ignorance of the competition. It is positioning this as new but I do not think CIOs are gullible enough to think this is going to change the industry forever. IBM is not changing the future of convergence; Cisco and Microsoft are.?

Laurence Guihard-Joly, vice-president at IBM?s integrated communications services unit, commented: ?These two particular service products are currently designed for distribution through our direct channel. We are in the beginning stages of this new standardised services model; at this time, it is hard to comment on future plans.?

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

(Microscope Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
Whether you are an enterprise VAR rolling out multi-million pound infrastructures or an SME-focused reseller, security is a core competency.

According to analysis from research firm Point Topic, a total of ?1.8bn is spent on security by businesses annually in the UK, with spending split across all sectors.

The research showed that 99 per cent of businesses with data access have security in place, with small companies spending between ?15 and ?134 per month and the biggest businesses paying between ?950 and ?2,500.

According to Tim Johnson, CEO at Point Topic, the bigger companies need more complex products and consultancy. ?Firewalls and antivirus systems show a high take-up at all sizes of premises, while disaster recovery plans, documented procedures and regulatory compliance monitoring are much more frequently seen at larger sites.?

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Firewalls and antivirus are still the bread and butter sales, but increased commoditisation combined with the changing threat landscape has meant resellers have built their expertise and can now offer enterprise-class products.

David Emm, senior technical consultant at security vendor Kaspersky Lab, believed there was no reason why resellers should not sell to large enterprises. ?Large companies quite often prefer to work through a particular reseller rather than different vendors because they have good relationships and can get multiple products from one source,? he said.

Jason Hill, sales director at distributor Tekdata, agreed. ?The average size of our partners is between seven and ten people and they are winning some major deals,? he said, adding these small businesses could do this as a result of building up their own skills over the years as well as increased distributor and vendor support.

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - UK. All Rights Reserved.

(Seattle Times, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oct. 2--Maybe I'm stuck in the 1990s, but I think the PC is coming back after a long, dull spell.

Not long ago, it was thought that we'd do most of our computing on the Internet, connecting up through Web services and mobile devices. That's where most consumer-technology startups are focused nowadays. They're pursuing opportunities created by advances in wireless and broadband service that enable people to connect in interesting new ways.

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It's not surprising that these Web 2.0 ventures are attractive. Pipes to the home have gotten fatter, and today's PCs can barely handle the videos, photos and other information we're sharing and downloading nowadays.

But that's changing, fast. An arms race between Intel and AMD is invigorating the PC industry, even before Windows Vista arrives and starts a wave of upgrades.

The chip companies are racing to beat each other to market with multicore processors that are boosting performance and lowering power consumption in laptops, desktops and servers.

Amazingly, these processors cost about the same as the single cores they're replacing. If you shop around and work the rebates, you can buy a dual-core laptop for about $600 -- within $100 of a single-core.

"You're getting two brains instead of one for about the same price," Intel spokesman Bill Kircos said.

He didn't say a lot about the rivalry, but look at Ford and Chevy trying to outdo each other by selling V8s for about the same price as four-cylinder motors. The only reason not to buy the V8, in this case, is because the V12s are just around the corner.

AMD got things rolling by introducing dual-core processors last year. Intel responded with its "Core Duo" systems in June. Now both companies will release "quad-core" processors by year-end.

Doubling cores doesn't necessarily double the power. Kircos said Duos are 40 percent more powerful and use 40 percent less power than Pentium processors.

Either way, mainstream PCs are suddenly becoming dramatically more powerful. And that's creating opportunities for software developers.

That's already happened in enterprise software, where Intel and AMD spent years preparing developers for multicore. Big software companies like Microsoft and Adobe have also modified programs for the new processors.

But there's still opportunity for new consumer PC applications, an area where the Puget Sound region has a lot of expertise.

So far games are the first to really take advantage of multicores. Game developers have been working on multicore processors for years -- the Xbox 360 and Sony PS3 consoles both have multiple cores.

Gabe Newell, founder of game developer Valve Software in Kirkland, says one quad-core processor can process a development application as fast as 32 previous generation processors connected by a 1 gigabyte local area network.

"This means that in the ongoing balancing act for application development, that client performance vs. network bandwidth and the other factors that define optimal architectures, have shifted toward the edge and away from the center," he said.

In other words, expect a greater focus on PCs now that they're getting some juice. The big question is, how much of that focus will come from tech companies around here?

Brier Dudley's column appears Mondays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2006, Seattle Times
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- SensorLogic Inc., www.sensorlogic.com, a leading provider of on-demand software applications that wirelessly connect machines and assets to enterprise systems, today announced the company has been selected as a "Next Big Thing" finalist at Enterprise 2006. SensorLogic's CEO, Ray Hood, will discuss the future of monitoring and controlling assets though terrestrial and satellite networks in a presentation on October 10th. The conference, produced by The Sand Hill Group, will also feature NetSuite, OutlookSoft, SOA Software and Zimbra.

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"Wireless control of corporate assets creates breakthrough opportunities for companies to generate new sources of revenue by tying machines and other assets back into their enterprise systems," said Ray Hood, CEO of SensorLogic. "We have long known that linking the 'real world' to enterprise systems is one of the hottest innovations in the software market, and Enterprise 2006 has taken notice."

Recently, SensorLogic illustrated the widespread feasibility and adoption of their solutions when it announced that the company had achieved a milestone of more than 10,000 activations in a single quarter. "We have seen the growth of mobile-to-mobile solutions," said M.R. Rangaswami, co-founder at The Sand Hill Group. "The Next Big Thing honor has been designed to recognize companies that are building businesses capable of growing and thriving in today's economy, and SensorLogic is strongly positioned to capitalize on its opportunity."

The track record for the Next Big Thing is impressive: to date, five past Next Big Thing presenters have been acquired for more than $2 billion - with several others in the pipeline with bright prospects.

According to McKinsey & Company, the machine-to-machine (M2M) market is estimated to grow to $100 billion by 2010 for U.S., Japan and Western Europe combined.

Enterprise 2006

The Sand Hill Group's annual Enterprise Conference brings together CEOs and leaders from diverse segments of the enterprise software industry to candidly share ideas and opinions, and debate strategic issues of common interest. The conference draws 200 of the "who is who" in the Enterprise and technology markets. See http://www.sandhill.com/conferences/enter2006.php. Each year, the entire conference surplus goes to the non-profit SHG Foundation. The Sand Hill Group is an investment and consulting group based in the San Francisco Bay Area. See http://www.sandhill.com/sandhillgroup/foundation.php.

SensorLogic

Headquartered in Addison, Texas, SensorLogic helps companies get more value from their assets by enabling remote monitoring, control, and optimization. We offer an on-demand Platform for creating the business rules and processes for almost any type of equipment. Through our "Hybrid Network" we can communicate with these assets via satellite, cellular, or wireline carriers. Taken together, SensorLogic's Platform and Hybrid Network create an unbeatable solution for creating "smart services" that drive new sources of revenue for our partners. SensorLogic's investors include Boston Millennia Partners, Sevin Rosen Funds, Hunt Ventures, STARTech Early Ventures and Star Ventures. Contact: [email protected]

SAN FRANCISCO --(Business Wire)-- CITTIO Inc., the award-winning innovation leader in network monitoring and operations software, announced today that Hypertec Business Continuity Disaster Recovery (BCDR) centers in Montreal and Quebec City will be powered by network monitoring capabilities from CITTIO's flagship WatchTower(R) product. In addition, Hypertec Group, Canada's seventh largest solutions provider, plans to resell WatchTower to businesses throughout the region.

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In the event of natural or man-made disasters, from hurricanes to terrorist attacks, Hypertec BCDR offers customers managed disaster-recovery services which include a fully redundant network covering the U.S., Canada and Europe; an around-the-clock service center staffed by IT professionals skilled in disaster-recovery methods and technology; high-capacity storage; power backup; and other features. CITTIO's WatchTower will be utilized by Hypertec's network operating center (NOC) to proactively monitor operations in its BCDR centers. WatchTower's geographic maps and executive dashboards will keep Hypertec's technicians and key customers constantly apprised of the health of every system and application on the network.

"WatchTower gives us exactly what we need - a comprehensive process to measure and ensure our service levels for our business-continuity and disaster-recovery services," said David Ahdoot, Hypertec's President. "The product's award-winning network monitoring and operations software is a critical component of our disaster recovery managed service offering. In addition, we believe our partnership with CITTIO to offer WatchTower to our customers as a product or service will yield impressive results throughout Canada, as we will have operational knowledge of the many benefits the product offers."

By partnering with CITTIO to resell WatchTower, Hypertec can offer a product that simplifies network management while delivering the most cost-effective, easy-to-use enterprise monitoring software on the market. Through this agreement, Hypertec plans to help small to mid-sized businesses avoid threats and operate their networks with assurance by leveraging CITTIO's platform-agnostic, web-based architecture--along with its capabilities for business process views, agent-free discovery, built-in alarms and notifications, automatic latency monitoring, graphing, and thresholding.

"Our relationship with Hypertec will help bring the powerful network monitoring capabilities of WatchTower to a wide variety of businesses across Canada," said Jamie Lerner, chief executive officer of CITTIO. "As a visionary partner, Hypertec is enriching their business model by offering WatchTower as a remote network monitoring service to customers with substantial IT requirements but smaller IT budgets and staff. Not only will customers be able to reap the benefits of a disaster recovery managed service that leverages our technology, but they will now have the ability to purchase WatchTower directly from Hypertec to monitor their own corporate networks."

About Hypertec

Hypertec Group is one of Canada's leading manufacturers and resellers of information technology products and services. The company was established in 1986 with the creation of Hypertec Systems Inc. Since that time, the firm has continued to experience strong growth, progressively becoming a conglomerate of vertically integrated entities offering design, development, distribution of brand-name computer products as well as after-sales service, technical support, computer assembly, integration and the development of solutions. Hypertec Group has attained its current status as a major computer enterprise with commercial, industrial and financial organizations through its strategic alliances with leading manufacturers, software houses and consulting firms. On a segmented basis, the Hypertec Group ranks as the largest Value-Added Reseller (VAR) in the province of Quebec, and among the largest ten in Canada. Hypertec Group invested in Business Continuity Disaster Recovery (BCDR) services in 2003 in order to complement its IT offerings. Hypertec BCDR Technopole is the largest disaster recovery services provider of its kind in Canada. For more information, please visit the Hypertec Group website at http://www.hypertec-group.com or the Hypertec BCDR website at www.hypertecbcdr.com.

About CITTIO, Inc.

CITTIO, Inc. is the award-winning innovation leader in Network and Systems Monitoring software. Based on a 100 percent Java architecture, only WatchTower(R) delivers a fully bundled software solution, including a web server, an embedded database, and a management portal, providing complete functionality for operating a network data center. The unique monitoring capabilities of WatchTower(R), coupled with powerful automation technology, provide IT managers and network technicians alike with a simple and complete solution for data center management. CITTIO's customers include industry-leading companies such as Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Hawaii, Capitol Advantage, Circuit City, Five Mile Capital, National Parks Conservation Association, Pacific Sunwear, and The Gymboree Corporation. For more information, please visit the CITTIO website www.cittio.com. Editor's Note: All CITTIO brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of CITTIO, Inc., in the United States and other countries. All other products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.

PHOENIX --(Business Wire)-- The School of Global Studies at Arizona State University (ASU) announces that Ed Kamins, chief operational excellence officer of global technology distributor Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT), is joining its advisory board, the Director's Council. As a member of this board of experts and leaders, Kamins will have significant input in the development of research, education and engagement strategies for the emerging school. He will assist in fundraising, international internships, student mentoring, research projects and ways that academic research can be applied to global challenges.

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"Ed has a wealth of real-world experience in international business, and we are delighted that he is a member of the advisory board for the ASU School of Global Studies," said David Jacobson, director of the school and an ASU professor. "Ed will be able to share his first-hand experience in structuring a business for the global economy; creating and managing an international team; and explaining the opportunities and challenges of global business. This type of expertise and guidance is critical to our unique concentration on global quality of life issues to find solutions for the most compelling issues of our time."

With more than 30 years of business leadership experience, Kamins currently serves as chief operational excellence officer at Avnet, which has sales in approximately 70 countries. He guides global efforts to reduce costs, improve customer service and refine operational efficiencies. Prior to this, Kamins was Avnet's chief information officer. He also previously helped launch and run an Avnet operating group with revenues exceeding $1 billion. In addition to his career at Avnet, Kamins held several positions with startup organizations and worked at Digital Equipment Corporation, where he was responsible for the company's $1.5 billion channels business in North America. Currently, Kamins serves on the board of directors for Calence, a privately-held networking solutions provider, and InterDigital Communications (Nasdaq:IDCC), which designs, develops and provides advanced wireless technologies and products. He is also on InterDigital's audit, governance and finance committees.

"Business has truly become global, and it is imperative that tomorrow's leaders have a solid understanding of working in an international environment," said Kamins. "ASU's School of Global Studies is dedicated to ensuring its students graduate with marketable degrees and are prepared to meet the global challenges that lie ahead of them. I am thrilled to join the advisory board and contribute to the collective wisdom of the faculty and other board members."

The School of Global Studies is a new initiative at ASU, designed to provide innovative approaches to global challenges, and to develop transdisciplinary perspectives across the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities in both research and teaching. The school offers a unique approach and setting across a range of thematic areas. These include governance; migration; urban studies and natural resources; information technology and the market; violence; and the circulation of art, culture and intellectual property.

About Arizona State University

A comprehensive public metropolitan research university enrolling more than 63,000 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students on four campuses, Arizona State University (ASU) is transforming into a New American University of unique colleges, schools, departments, and research centers that comprise close-knit yet diverse academic communities that are international in scope. ASU champions intellectual and cultural diversity, and welcomes students from all fifty states and more than one hundred nations across the globe.

About Avnet, Inc.

Avnet enables success from the center of the technology industry, providing cost-effective services and solutions vital to a broad base of more than 100,000 customers and 300 suppliers. The company markets, distributes and adds value to a wide variety of electronic components, enterprise computer products and embedded subsystems. Through its premier market position, Avnet brings a breadth and depth of capabilities that help its trading partners accelerate growth and realize cost efficiencies. For fiscal year ended, July 1, 2006, Avnet generated revenue of $14.25 billion through sales in approximately 70 countries. Please visit www.avnet.com for more information.

BATON ROUGE, La. --(Business Wire)-- TraceSecurity, a leading provider of on-demand security compliance management software, has expanded its national presence by opening an Advanced Technology Resource Center (ATRC) in Cupertino, Calif. The company anticipates that the new location will increase exposure to potential business partners, assist in recruiting new talent and support its business development strategy.

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"Some of the largest security companies in the world are headquartered in or around Silicon Valley," said Pete Stewart, CEO of TraceSecurity. "Having an increased presence in California will help us test the market while creating a foundation of solid relationships with our clients and boost our visibility with potential business partners. I believe this expansion poises TraceSecurity for future growth."

Jim Stickley, CTO, vice president of engineering and co-founder of TraceSecurity, said, "As TraceSecurity continues to grow, it's imperative that we recruit outstanding, technology-savvy talent to join our team. We need to recruit knowledgeable individuals who understand the importance of data security and will work hard to help us achieve our business goal of developing the best products and services available in the marketplace. California is known for having some of the best talent in the technology industry, and we are excited to build a larger presence there."

The ATRC is located at 19925 Stevens Creek Blvd. in Cupertino.

About TraceSecurity

TraceSecurity is a leading provider of on-demand security compliance software and services. The company's patent-pending enterprise solution, TraceSecurity Compliance Manager, helps customers satisfy national and international data security compliance requirements mandated by such regulations as GLBA, Sarbanes-Oxley, and HIPAA. The software's patent-pending technology automates vulnerability testing, policy management, employee education and board-level reporting. More than 400 global enterprises in the financial services, insurance, healthcare, government, manufacturing and services industries rely on TraceSecurity to continually test and improve the computer security of their companies.

TraceSecurity's products and services include: Risk Assessments, Security Assessments, Two Factor Authentication solutions, Anti-Phishing Solutions, Penetration Testing, Application Testing, Social Engineering, Security Awareness training, and On-demand Vulnerability and Compliance Assessment software. Headquartered in Baton Rouge, La., TraceSecurity maintains offices in Houston, Austin, and Dallas; Portland, Ore.; Columbus, Ohio; Cupertino, Calif., Salt Lake City and San Diego. The company can be reached by phone at 877.275.3009 or on the Web at www.tracesecurity.com.

ATLANTA, Oct. 2 -- SED International, Inc. (OTC Bulletin Board: SECX.PK), a leading distributor of computer, consumer electronics, and cellular products, announced today the addition of Seagate Technology to its vendor line card. Effective October 1, 2006, SED became a Seagate Authorized Distributor for the United States and Latin America. This adds the Seagate branded products to its storage offerings, which already included the Maxtor brand.

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"We are very excited about this new partnership," said Jeanie Diamond, CEO and Chairman of the Board. "Our relationship with Seagate dates back to the 1980's and we are very proud to once again partner with such a dynamic company. Seagate is one of the most respected brands in the world and a true leader in our industry. This provides our customers with more options and solutions to meet the demands of our customers. At a time when the storage segment is exploding, we view this partnership as an extremely important addition to our company."

"The addition of SED as a Seagate authorized distributor extends Seagate's reach to a new set of resellers who will now be able to take advantage of Seagate's cutting-edge hard drive technology and capabilities, product breadth, and best-in-class service and support and programs to strengthen their business," said Jeff Loebbaka, senior vice president of Global Channel Sales and Corporate Marketing at Seagate. "By offering both Seagate and Maxtorbranded drives, SED will be able to give resellers more choice across a broader range of value propositions."

About SED International, Inc.
SED International, Inc., founded in 1980 is a leading provider of wireless communications, computer hardware, and consumer electronics to channel partners throughout the United States and Latin America. Known for industry leading service levels, SED International delivers world-class offerings including flexible financing, end-user fulfillment, expert technical support, and customized reseller programs. SED International is headquartered in Atlanta, GA with additional sales offices and distribution centers in Dallas, TX; Miami, FL; City of Industry, CA; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Bogota, Columbia. Additional information can be found at http://www.sedonline.com/.

About Seagate Technology
Seagate is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacture and marketing of hard disc drives, providing products for a wide-range of applications, including Enterprise, Desktop, Mobile Computing, Consumer Electronics and Branded Solutions. Seagate's business model leverages technology leadership and world-class manufacturing to deliver industry-leading innovation and quality to its global customers, and to be the low cost producer in all markets in which it participates. The company is committed to providing award- winning products, customer support and reliability to meet the world's growing demand for information storage. Seagate can be found around the globe and at http://www.seagate.com/.

SED International, Inc.

CONTACT: Rob Kalman, Vice President, Marketing of SED International,Inc., +1-770-243-1056, or [email protected]

Web site: http://www.sedonline.com/http://www.seagate.com/

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 2 -- Rhozet Corporation today announced that its Carbon Coder video transcoding technology has been selected by mobile video pioneer Actimagine for online transcoding. Rhozet's automated transcoding software allows Actimagine's partners to conveniently and remotely prepare full-length movies for playback on mobile devices.

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(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060907/SFTH097LOGO )
Actimagine is the creator of Mobiclip(TM), a patented power-efficient software video codec that enables full motion video playback on low-power devices such as cell phones and handheld game consoles. Mobiclip is currently used by media companies, including Sony Pictures Digital, to provide full- length feature movies on removable memory cards for cell phones.

Actimagine chose Rhozet's video transcoding technology to support the growing amount of content being transcoded to Mobiclip format. "Rhozet's video transcoding technology is the perfect solution for our mobile video transcoding platform," said Andre Pagnac, CEO of Actimagine. "It is a fast, flexible, and cost-effective solution that helps us provide the remote transcoding services our partners in the motion picture industry need to make their movies accessible to the mobile market."

"Actimagine is breaking new ground in the expanding video world and we're thrilled that they have chosen Carbon Coder as the platform for their new mobile transcoding service," said David Trescot, CEO of Rhozet.

Rhozet Carbon Coder is a universal transcoding application that facilitates the transfer of media between acquisition, editing, playout, archive, Web, mobile and more. Carbon Coder can run as a stand-alone application or as part of a multi-node, fully-automated rendering farm. Carbon Coder provides high-performance, scalable and cost-effective transcoding for a broad range of business environments, from specialized studios to enterprise- scale installations.

About Actimagine
Actimagine pushes the boundaries of video on mobile. Actimagine licenses Mobiclip(TM), its new patented power-efficient software video codec. Mobiclip delivers higher quality and higher compression while using far less CPU power than usual solution and standards. It has already been endorsed by major content studios to deliver full-length, full-screen, 30 frames per second movies on memory cards. Actimagine Corp is registered in Delaware, USA and currently headquartered in Paris, France. The company has overseas branches in Tokyo and Singapore. Customer references include Nintendo Co., Ltd, Sony Pictures Digital, Fisher Price or Sony Ericsson. For more information, please visit http://www.actimagine.com/ .

About Rhozet Corporation
The Rhozet Corporation is dedicated to providing video and broadcast professionals with accelerated high-quality media transcoding solutions. Rhozet offers both off-the-shelf and customized software configurations for the production and content delivery markets. For more information about Rhozet please contact the company at 408-432-3333 or visit the company website at http://www.rhozet.com/ .

Rhozet is a trademark of Rhozet Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective corporations.

Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20060907/SFTH097LOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

Rhozet Corporation

CONTACT: Sarah Kavanagh, Public Relations, +1-650-726-3482, [email protected] , for Rhozet Corporation

Web site: http://www.rhozet.com/http://www.actimagine.com/

(Sun, The (Lowell, MA) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oct. 1--There's an old saying that nobody lies on their deathbed wishing they'd spent more time at the office.

That little chestnut might not apply to Mike Demaras, though.

"I enjoy it, every minute of it," said Demaras, a 78-year-old senior sales consultant at Enterprise Bank. "I'll do it as long as I'm physically able and the bank wants to keep me on."

Demaras has plenty of company, according to a survey released in April by the MetLife Mature Market Institute. Research revealed that 37 percent of 66- to-70-year-olds are either working or looking for work, as are 60 percent of 60- to-65-year-olds and 78 percent of 55- to-59-year-olds.

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Among the oldest age bracket, 72 percent of employees cited the desire to "stay active and engaged" as a primary reason to work.

Demaras was without a job only once, when he left Shawmut Bank in 1990 during a severe downturn in the banking industry. He was old enough, and financially secure enough, to retire -- but he didn't.

"It's a funny feeling," Demaras said. "All of a sudden you say, 'I don't have a job, what do I do?' I was kind of lost."

Demaras ended up working for Goodwill Industries, the WCAP radio station and the Sheraton hotel in Lowell, before landing at Enterprise, where he's worked three days a week for nearly nine years.

Not all elderly workers are just doing it to stay busy, though. Some still need the cash -- whether it's to pay the bills, pad their nest egg, or fund leisure activities.

Emile Desrochers, 74, of Dracut, worked two jobs for 14 years as a young man to support his family, then continued working full time as a school custodian until the mid-1990s. He now puts in about 25 hours a week as an attendant at the Davidson Street parking lot on Lowell.

Desrochers said he and his wife use the money to take vacations.

"We take trips to Florida, we went to Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Italy," he said. "We had seven children. We never were able to do it when we were young."

Andy Estruth of Boston College's Center for Retirement Research predicts that more and more people will be working past the traditional retirement age, with lifespans increasing, pension plans being phased out and Social Security benefits potentially dwindling. According to Estruth, the average retirement age for men has hovered at around 63 since 1980, but he projects that age will soon rise into the mid-60s.

"We think more and more people will find it important for their retirement-income security to lengthen their work lives a bit," Estruth said.

"Need(ing) income to live on" was the top reason for staying in the workplace cited by 55- to-65-year-olds in the MetLife survey.

As more older workers begin to stick around for a few extra years, services are popping up to match those people with potential employers.

"There are 77 million baby boomers that just started retiring," said Patrick Rafter of RetirementJobs.com, a Wellesley-based Web site that launched in May. "They're not going to have the conventional retirement our grandfathers did. They need some revenue, and they also want to keep their minds active (and) stay social."

Gunvor "Gunnie" Davis, 85, refers to herself as "semi-retired" -- she still works 20 hours a week at Wilmington Builders Supply.

"I just fill in and do whatever is necessary," Davis said. "It's a little bit of everything -- general office work. I go because I enjoy it. I've been very, very happy there all these years."

Davis has lived in Wilmington all her life, and worked at the company for more than 64 years. Her husband passed away 10 years ago, and she has no children.

"I live alone, so why should I stay (at home) all day long?" she said. "I think it's rare. Most people can't wait to retire to get away from their work."

Warren Muldoon, 74, of Lowell, celebrated his 50th anniversary with Verizon Communications Inc. earlier this year.

"Some people have been talking retirement since they were 25," said Muldoon, a central-office switchman. "I never thought that way. I figured I'd just keep going and going ... sixty-five came and it just bypassed."

Like Demaras and Davis, Muldoon, a lifelong bachelor, said he could retire now and not worry about money. He's sticking around purely because he wants to.

"It's a great company and that's really part of why I'm still working," he said. "I've talked to people who have retired, and the first three months or so they say it's great, then they get a little bored."

According to a Pew Research Center survey released last week, retirees are no longer content to accept their gold watch and pension, and fade into the sunset. More than three quarters -- 77 percent -- of today's workers expect to work for pay after they retire, the survey found, and the majority of those people will do so because they want to, not because they have to. This appears to be a major change in attitudes -- in a survey earlier this year from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, just 27 percent of current retirees said they had ever worked for pay after retirement.

Demaras, who in a little over a year will celebrate both his 10th anniversary with Enterprise and his 80th birthday in a matter of months, said his work keeps him vigorous.

"I urge people to rethink retirement," Demaras said. "I don't want to wind up on a couch with a clicker watching Oprah Winfrey at four o'clock in the afternoon."

Demaras said he still gets to spend plenty of time with his three sons and six grandsons, and he's been with his second wife for 22 years. They spend January, February and March at a place down in Delray Beach, Fla. Three months is more than enough for Demaras, who has a measure of distaste for the Sunshine State.

"There are too many old people down there," he said.

To see more of The Sun, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.lowellsun.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Sun, Lowell, Mass.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

MUNICH, Germany --(Business Wire)-- In a recent study of Gartner's Executive Program (EXP) business processes optimization with service-enabled applications is on the CIO's high priority agenda. At the same time a German study for SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) has confirmed this business need especially for Germany's distinct high share of SMEs.

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AgilPro is a process integration framework based on a service orientated architecture (SOA). AgilPro integrates existing ERP (enterprise resource planning), material management and proprietary data processing systems using service adapters. Particularly SMEs are known to use isolated solutions which prevent integrated process flow. AgilPro Integration Framework will help to close this gap.

The AgilPro Tools for Modeling and Simulation are realized in a joint venture project with the University of Augsburg/Germany. The AgilPro Modeler is based on the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) and Graphical Modeling Framework (GMF). The AgilPro Modeler team has joined the Java WorkFlow Toolbox Project (JWT). The JWT project is a proposed open source project under the Eclipse Technology Project.

The service adapters for ERP and production planning systems are realized in cooperation with the system vendor Helium V ERP Systeme GmbH.

AgilPro is promoted by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Technology within the scope of the research program High-Tech-Offensive Zukunft Bayern.

The AgilPro Light Modeler (LiMo) for modeling and simulation will be available free of charge with base adapters (Q4/2006). Available base adapters will be: Word, Excel, Acrobat/PDF, Internet Explorer, Firefox and OpenOffice. LiMo runs on Windows, Linux and Mac-OS-X.

-- Those who would like to model and simulate their own enterprise processes with the free version may register at: [email protected]

-- Process modeling applies to the documentation of business processes as well as to the development of organization guidelines for ISO-9000 and ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library).

-- Information about planned adapters and B2B-Interfaces (e.g. myOpenFactory) may requested at: [email protected]

For further information and animations of AgilPro modeling and simulation see www.agilpro.eu

-- AgilPro Executive Summary (German)

-- Demo-1: Quotation Condition (ERP) (1:32min 1.6MB)

-- Demo-2: Company Research (0:59min 0.8MB)

-- Demo-3: Travel Organization (1:17min 1.2MB)

-- Demo-4: Private Air Travel (0:45min 0.7MB)

-- Demo-5: Portfolio Diversification by Markowitz (1:48min 1.0MB)

2 October, 2006, London Bluesocket, the leader in open wireless network, security and management solutions, has today announced a new value added distribution agreement with Sphinx, one of the UKs leading IT distributors specialising in security and networking.

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The agreement sees the two companies partnering to fill a gap in the growing wireless market, where enterprises are looking for high quality WiFi products, teamed with expert skills in implementing and securing wireless networks.

Bluesocket selected Sphinx for its focused security distribution model and its unique ability to quickly develop the Bluesocket channel by tapping into an existing reseller base of more than 500 VARs. Bluesocket operates entirely through the channel and does no direct selling in the UK.

Sphinx will distribute the complete range of Bluesocket products, including BlueSecure Access Points and Wireless Controllers, the BlueView Management System and Wireless LANPlanner software. The company will also launch Bluesockets first enterprise-class Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) wireless Access Point into the channel later this month.

Wireless networking is taking off in a big way, with companies looking to deploy WiFi quickly and securely as the need for mobile connectivity both within and outside the workplace increases, according to Jim Calderbank, Director of Distribution EMEA for Bluesocket. Were seeing huge demand not only for high quality wireless networking and security products, but the implementation skills and training expertise to go with them. The appointment of Sphinx will help us quickly channel more business through our VARs and meet this demand head on.

Nick Bannister, Sales Director of Sphinx, added: The two companies dovetail nicely into one another we had a gap in our portfolio for a wireless security vendor and Bluesocket needed a new channel to market. Our immediate plans are to get Bluesocket in front of our top dozen or so VARs to introduce them to the product set and the company, then well broaden our marketing out to about 100 resellers. Its an exciting time for wireless adoption and were delighted to be teaming up with one of the industrys best players.

Sphinx and Bluesocket will work together initially to train and educate the channel about the wireless networking market and the issues that customers are facing today.

ends

About Sphinx

As one of the UKs leading independent IT Distributors, Sphinx provides substantial value added services to complement the range of technology products they supply, from market leaders and innovators in the Database, Security, Networking and Operating Systems arenas.

The company constantly strives to deliver best-value technology and offer a breadth of product range that is unrivalled in the industry. Acting as intermediary, Sphinx is able to put customers in touch with market-winning products from credible Vendor Partners from around the world. With a wealth of experience and expertise Sphinx is uniquely placed to help Reseller Partners to successfully develop appropriate, cost-effective technology solutions, right for their market and their customers.

About Bluesocket

Founded in 1999, Bluesocket is the leader in open wireless network, security and management solutions. Its complete WLAN solution portfolio delivers trust and simplicity to increasingly complex wireless networks. Thousands of BlueSecure Controllers, Access Points, Intrusion Detection Systems and BlueView Management Systems are deployed by leading enterprises including Harvard University, Honeywell, Universal Health Services, Toyota, Parker Hannifin and others who require a higher quality of WLAN service. Bluesocket's long-standing expertise in wireless and security has attracted a large customer base that spans enterprise, education, healthcare, government, library and public access markets. Bluesocket customers can profit from their wireless networks by protecting existing investments, maximizing ROI, and increasing their competitive edge. For more information, please visit http://www.bluesocket.com.

(Frederick News-Post, The (Frederick, MD) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--FREDERICK -- A local businesswoman has been honored with a Maryland Business Enterprise award.

Misti Morningstar, owner of Morningstar Design and Le Savon in downtown Frederick, will be honored in October for her outstanding achievements. The award denotes accomplishments in business development, client satisfaction, professional affiliations and community outreach. The award will be presented Oct. 27 at the University of Maryland University College in Adelphi.

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Ms. Morningstar represents the best of the state's more than 200,000 women and minority-owned businesses, said Sharon R. Pinder, special secretary to the Governor's Office of Minority Affairs.

"Receiving this award is truly a special honor, and we're excited to be recognized among so many dedicated business owners," Ms. Morningstar said Thursday.

"The meaning of this award is especially close to my heart because I, myself, am a woman, and I have worked hard toward my goals," she said. "But helping the community and others succeed will continue to be my main priority."

She said she hoped the award would inspire other women and minorities to work hard and have faith in their goals and dreams.

Ms. Morningstar's businesses include a successful graphic arts firm and a business that makes and sells handmade soaps. Some of her soaps were especially designed to relate to charities and help raise funds for them.

Ms. Morningstar was appointed in June to the Business Advisory Council of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Her main focus on the council will be to provide a voice for small business, especially minority- and woman-owned businesses, she said at the time of her appointment.

Her goals on the committee will be to push for keeping taxes low, reducing unnecessary spending and providing affordable health care.

To see more of The Frederick News-Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.fredericknewspost.com/.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Frederick News-Post, Md.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

(Bangkok Post (Thailand) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 30--Siam Commercial New York Life Insurance Plc (SCNYL) will introduce two new policies through its agency and worksite distribution channels aiming to boost more sales in the fourth quarter of this year.

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The new products, expected to launched in October, reflect SCNYL's strategy to strengthen its client base through non-bank channels to equal to the success of its bancassurance channel, according to Donald Carden, SCNYL's president and CEO.

SCNYL currently controls a 50 percent share of the bancassurance market. Its bancassurance business grew last year by 14 percent to 4.05 billion baht out of a total of 4.85 billion baht in first-year premiums.

"The fourth quarter is the most productive season to generate sales. We see a promising opportunity to launch new products to capture the rising demand of working consumers who need long-term financial planning for their retirements," said Mr Carden.

He said the two new long-term policies combined both savings and protection benefits. Both offer competitive benefits, with consistent and long-term periods of cash returns up to maturity. The benefit return after retirement will also increase substantially.

The products will be marketed through agencies, the company's core distribution channel, and worksites, with a focus on government, state enterprise and private company employees in the middle-income bracket.

SCNYL expects to continue to expand non-bank channels and become the market leader in each one.

The company aims to tap rising health-consciousness as well as growing awareness of long-term financial planning for retirement. Working people who are due to retire in the next 10-20 years have high purchasing power to invest, and now is right time to expand the market, Mr Carden said.

In April this year, SCNYL introduced a new medium-term endowment product, Sasomsap 224, sold through government and state enterprise worksites, and obtained a favourable response, he added.

The policy requires paying premiums for 20 years, offers 25-year protection coverage and a 3 percent cash return every two years, from the second to 24th years.

With increasing awareness and the government's campaign to promote the benefits of life policies, SCNYL anticipates its new products will be highly competitive investment options, Mr Carden said.

SCNYL expects its total premiums will rise to 11 billion baht this year, up 27 percent from its 2005 results.

To see more of the Bangkok Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.bangkokpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, Bangkok Post, Thailand
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42914 ) has announced the addition of Customer Relationship Management Market Assessment 2006 to their offering.

In 2005, there was a resurgence of interest in customer relationship management (CRM), with commentators, as they had in the late 1990s, reiterating that CRM is about more than technology -- it is about putting the customer at the heart of the business. However, a new phrase has entered the CRM lexicon -- customer experience management (CEM) -- in order to describe the strategy, as opposed to the technology that facilitates the execution of the strategy.

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This Market Assessment report is concerned with the technology; technology providers have moved on, have been developing their products to embrace the demands of the marketplace. Those demands include: technology that can link the core CRM applications of customer service, sales and marketing with other applications at play in the organisation; technology that can reduce costs; and technology that can be accessed over the Internet.

The largest surge has been towards the technology that can be accessed via the Internet, with pioneers in this field, such as salesforce.com, being joined by other major vendors (such as Siebel and SAP) taking advantage of the wider availability of broadband, with their own online offerings. The terminology has changed in the past few years too, from application service provider (ASP), which referred to systems hosted on vendors' own servers rather than those installed within the client company, to Software as a Service (SaaS), or hosted solutions, which means the same thing.

Hosted solutions are ideal for smaller companies; rather than incurring enormous set-up, installation, training and maintenance costs -- as well as having to pay licence fees for each user -- they simply pay for access to a system designed for them but hosted elsewhere.

These advances mean that the profile of the marketplace has changed. The distinctions between those offering enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications and those offering CRM applications have blurred, as developers in each field have extended their offerings. With all major vendors also making forays into the hosted arena, the distinctions are continually made less clear.

There are fewer competitors in the market than previously. Barriers to entry are high and, of the plethora of CRM vendors that emerged in the early part of the century, many have either been swallowed up by larger players or have gone into administration.

The market is consolidating: Siebel Systems -- for so long the CRM touchstone -- was acquired by Oracle early in 2006; other major vendors have also lost their independence to global corporations.

The emergence of new markets -- in China especially -- is one of the key drivers of the mergers discussed in this report. Consolidation strengthens the market, and merged companies can perform better in a global market.

Another driver in the CRM market is the emergence of Microsoft, with its own solutions aimed very much at smaller companies. Microsoft CRM provides developers with a platform upon which they can build their own branded solutions for their own niche markets, but it also provides small to medium enterprises (SMEs) with the means to improve their own services and compete against larger rivals. In addition, Microsoft works with established CRM and ERP vendors so that CRM applications can interact with Microsoft desktop and office applications, allowing data from CRM applications to be viewed through, for example, Microsoft's Outlook.

Wireless technology has also advanced, affording greater access to CRM systems while users are mobile. Advances in Internet telephony and broadband technology have meant that developers have been able to advance voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) to the point where real cost savings can be made, especially in the call centre.

Early CRM evangelists insisted that CRM was not a passing management fad and that it would change forever the way companies did business. The early adopters provided the testing beds for technology that had not yet reached its potential, but the high cost of implementation did not provide the size of return investors in this technology were looking for. CRM went back to the drawing board and it is still developing. However, it is now clear that the early CRM evangelists were right about the potential of this technology.

Topics Covered

Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. Strategic Overview

3. Market Leaders

4. CRM Support Services

5. An International Perspective

6. PEST Analysis

7. CRM Roundtable

8. Company Profiles

9. The Future

10. Consumer Confidence

11. Further Sources

Companies Mentioned

- AMDOCS LTD

- Antenna Software Inc

- Avaya Inc

- Communispace Corporation

- Datanomic Ltd

- Evoxus Ltd

- FrontRange Solutions USA Inc

- FRONTRANGE SOLUTIONS USA Inc

- INFOR GLOBAL SOLUTIONS

- Informatica Corporation

- Interactive Intelligence Inc

- InvisibleCRM

- Kana Software Inc

- Kingdee International Software Group Company Ltd

- Maximizer Software Inc

- Microsoft Inc

- NetSuite Inc

- Oracle Corporation

- ORACLE CORPORATION

- Powerise Information Technology Co Ltd

- RightNow Technologies Inc

- Sage Group PLC

- salesforce.com

- Salesnet Inc

- SAP AG

- Saratoga Systems Inc -- Apresta

- SAS Institute Inc

- Softlab Ltd

- SPSS Inc

- SSA Global

- SugarCRM Inc

- Teradata Corporation

- ThinkAnalytics Ltd

- UFIDA Software Co Ltd

- Vettro Corporation

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c42914

NEW YORK, Oct. 2 -- Light Reading (http://www.lightreading.com/), the world's leading online publication for the telecom industry, and Heavy Reading (http://www.heavyreading.com/), its prestigious market research division, today announce that Ethernet Expo 2006 is once again set to be the premiere Ethernet event in the industry.

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Ethernet Expo 2006, taking place October 23-25 in New York, is Light Reading's second annual Ethernet Expo in North America and will build on the success of Ethernet Expo 2005 and Ethernet Expo Europe 2006, making this the most innovative and informative conference and expo of the year. Ethernet Expo 2006 will bring together an unrivaled team of top-level service providers, equipment suppliers, and market analysts to explore critical issues facing the Ethernet industry, while providing a showcase for the latest technologies and solutions.

Heavy Reading will also be announcing the winners of the Ethernet Service Provider of the Year Awards for North America on October 25 at Ethernet Expo 2006. Winners will be named in these three key categories: market leadership, product portfolio, and innovation. For more information, please visit: http://www.lightreading.com/serviceproviderawards.

This year's Ethernet Expo boasts an unprecedented speaker lineup, including keynotes from Ciena, AT&T, Fujitsu, and Verizon Business. Other speakers include leading experts from Ethernet service providers Broadwing, Cablevision Optimum Lightpath, Equant, FiberNET, FiberTower, Global Crossing, Level 3, Masergy, Nextlink, RCN, Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Telecom, VSNL International, and Yipes.

Stan Hubbard, Ethernet Expo 2006 Conference Chair and Heavy Reading Senior Analyst, notes: "Heavy Reading had high expectations for the carrier Ethernet services and equipment markets entering 2006, and we are pleased to report that both sectors are firing on all cylinders and barreling full-speed ahead. The Expo will give us a chance to hear firsthand from dozens of service providers and equipment vendors about how they are working together to transform the telecom landscape with Ethernet and deliver unprecedented benefits for enterprise and residential customers. I couldn't be more excited about what we have in store for attendees."

To register for Ethernet Expo 2006, please visit: http://www.ethernetexpo.com/.

Registration for press and analysts is free.

Contact:

Amy Averbook
Director of Marketing
Light Reading Inc.
[email protected]
212-925-0020 x112

About Ethernet Expo 2006

Ethernet Expo 2006 is being held on October 23-25 at the Hilton New York. A combined conference and exhibition focused on Ethernet's evolution as an enabler of next-generation enterprise and consumer services and applications, the Ethernet Expo series has emerged as the best-attended Ethernet event in the industry.

About Light Reading
Founded in 2000, Light Reading Inc. (http://www.lightreading.com/) is the ultimate source for technology and financial analysis of the communications industry, leading the media sector in terms of traffic, content, and reputation. It reaches an extensive audience of executives and technologists within the telecom and enterprise networking communities, as well as the financial/industry analysts and investors who track these sectors. Light Reading was acquired by United Business Media in August 2005, and operates as a unit of CMP Technology.

About CMP Technology
CMP Technology (http://www.cmp.com/) is a marketing solutions company serving the technology industry. Through its market-leading portfolio of trusted information brands, CMP has earned the confidence of more technology professionals than any other media company. As a result, CMP is the premier provider of access, insight and actionable programs designed to connect sellers and buyers in ways that yield superior return on investment. CMP Technology is a subsidiary of United Business Media (http://www.unitedbusinessmedia.com/), a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $3 billion.

Light Reading

CONTACT: Amy Averbook, Director of Marketing of Light Reading Inc.,+1-212-925-0020 ext. 112, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.lightreading.com/http://www.ethernetexpo.com/http://www.heavyreading.
com/http://www.cmp.com/

BOULDER, Colo., Oct. 2 -- Spatial Energy, a leading provider of high resolution satellite imagery and aerial photography data solutions, today announced it has joined the Google Enterprise Professional program as a Google Earth Specialist. The program complements Google enterprise geospatial solutions and helps customers derive more value from their Google Earth Enterprise deployments.

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Bud Pope, president of Spatial Energy commented, "The Google Enterprise Professional Program enables us to provide Google Earth Enterprise solutions to users in the global oil and gas industry. Google Earth Enterprise integrates a client's proprietary data with our satellite imagery and aerial photography to deliver uniquely customized 3D geospatial databases direct to the desktop. Spatial Energy offers complete data and software solutions with the ability to access all information from a single, intuitive interface, thereby further enhancing the workflow across the oilfield enterprise. With expertise across the spectrum of geospatial technologies, Spatial Energy delivers the benefits of Google's innovative geospatial products with the integration, customization and support required by oil and gas customers."

The Google Enterprise Professional program includes developers, consultants and independent software vendors that provide value-added services for Google enterprise products.

"The Energy Sector is a key growth market for Google Earth Enterprise products. Spatial Energy is well established within this market, which will benefit both existing and new customers. Google is excited to have Spatial Energy as a partner in the Google Enterprise Professional program," said Kevin Smith, program manager for Google Enterprise Professional.

For more information on the Google Enterprise Professional program, please visit http://www.google.com/enterprise/gep.

About Spatial Energy
Spatial Energy is the leading provider of custom high resolution satellite imagery and aerial photography solutions for the worldwide oil and gas industry. Spatial Energy delivers content and provides custom integrated solutions for the Google Earth and ESRI environments. Its imagery is used in all facets of the oilfield lifecycle. Spatial Energy offers flexible data delivery options and is focused on making information accessible on every desktop. Additional information is available at http://www.spatialenergy.com/.

Spatial Energy

CONTACT: Kim Pickett of Spatial Energy, +1-303-884-9157,[email protected]

Web site: http://www.spatialenergy.com/

(Denver Post, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Sep. 29--MINORITY ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT: Recognized Helga Grunerud, executive director of the Hispanic Contractors of Colorado, as the Minority Advocate of the Year at MED's annual luncheon Wednesday.

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GRANDERSON WEALTH MANAGEMENT GROUP: Appointed Sharlene Spencer as vice president of the Denver-based financial-management firm. Spencer previously served clients at Edward Jones Investments.

THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS: Named Rep. Marilyn Musgrave a Guardian of Small Business for her outstanding voting record on behalf of America's small-business owners in the 109th Congress.

BOULDER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE: Honored Technology and Management Solutions president and chief executive Theresa Szczurek, with the "Women Who Light Up the Community" award. The award honors community leaders who share their talents, making Boulder County a better place to live, work and play.

RGL -- FORENSIC ACCOUNTANTS & CONSULTANTS: Appointed Paul Brunner as CEO.

VTBS ARCHITECTS: Announced that Gary Prager, managing partner of the Denver office, has been named LEED Accredited Professional with the USGreen Building Council.

STERLING-RICE GROUP: Promoted Jennifer Bollman to associate media director, Jeff Curry to creative director and Jeff Russell to senior production artist.

PREEMPTIVE WORKFORCE SOLUTIONS: Announced that CEO Carl Bosland has been appointed to the National Mediation Board roster of labor arbitrators.

COLORADO SPRINGS SCORE CHAPTER: Named Ric Denton chairman for fiscal year 2007. Other new officers include: Mary Stern and Mark Sievers, vice chairs; Louise Walsh, secretary; and Mark Dittrich, treasurer.

FRONTIER GMAC REAL ESTATE: Sarah Snead joined the agency as a broker associate in the Denver Tech Center office.

WHITE CONSTRUCTION GROUP: Announced that Douglas Decker, vice president, has earned the Design-Build Professional designation by the Design-Build Institute of America.

JE DUNN CONSTRUCTION: Chris Long has joined the company as a project manager.

CACTUS MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS: Appointed Ainslie Fortune as an account director and Adam Dyer an assistant account executive.

To see more of The Denver Post, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.denverpost.com.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Denver Post
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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SEATTLE --(Business Wire)-- Incuity Data Solutions and Incuity Software, Inc. announced today they will conduct a joint workshop for manufacturing executives in Seattle on Oct. 18, 2006, to help them learn how to make better business decisions that can optimize their companies' productivity and profitability.

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"This free workshop is ideal for both decision makers and decision implementers in any manufacturing company, including people in production, operations, plant management, engineering and IT management," said Jason Brickner, IDS Systems Sales Engineer. "There will be two sessions per workshop, one covering the business problems that the Incuity EMI software can help people solve and one covering the more technical aspects of how to configure applications to do that."

"Anyone in the business of manufacturing knows the roadblocks encountered in attempting to link plant floor systems with enterprise applications," said Gary Wilson, Incuity Vice President of Sales. "The first half of the workshop will cover how users can resolve issues such as leveraging legacy historians; compliance management; downtime/OEE analysis and reports; product analysis and reporting; key performance indicator (KPI) support and dashboards; manufacturing integration with ERP systems; and enhanced supply chain visibility.

"The second half will explain how to access, correlate, analyze, visualize and act on manufacturing and business data from all the systems in a manufacturing enterprise," he added.

The IDS-Incuity workshop will be held on Oct. 18 at the Doubletree Hotel Seattle Airport (18740 International Blvd.). The workshop begins with a continental breakfast, registration and networking at 9:00 a.m. The first half of the program, starting at 10:00 a.m., will cover the enterprise issues involved with truly linking plant floor manufacturing operations with enterprise computing applications. Following lunch, the second session, at 1:00 p.m., will provide an overview of web services, data source connectivity, databases, advanced trending, X-Y plotting tools, Excel reports, web portals, dashboards and a unified production model.

Anyone interested in attending the seminar should go directly to the Incuity Software web site at www.incuity.com to get more details on the workshop and to register online. Seating is limited for these special events, so people are urged to sign up early so they don't miss out.

About Incuity Data Solutions

Based in Albany, Oregon, and with offices in Boise, Idaho and San Francisco, California, Incuity data Solutions provides software, professional services and comprehensive support for creating business intelligence for manufacturing solutions for a wide variety of industries such as food and beverages, metals, discrete parts manufacturing, and water and wastewater treatment. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.incuitydatasolutions.com.

About Incuity

Incuity Software, based in Mission Viejo, California, is a pioneer in the creation of data management systems for reporting, analysis and business intelligence applications in manufacturing and process companies. More than 45,000 seats of the company's products have been installed since 1998, in 13 languages and in more than 40 countries. In addition to its headquarters operations in California, Incuity has regional offices in Nevada and Massachusetts in the U.S. as well as in Sydney, Australia; Duesseldorf, Germany; and Johannesburg, South Africa. The company also maintains a Professional Services group in Burlington, Ontario, Canada.

For additional information about the company and Incuity products, or for a complete list of value-added resellers around the world, please visit the company's web site at http://www.incuity.com.

CHICAGO --(Business Wire)-- Fitch has upgraded Aquila, Inc.'s (ILA) ratings as follows:

--Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to 'B' from 'B-';

--Senior Secured to 'BB/RR1' from 'BB-/RR1';

--Senior Unsecured to 'B+/RR3' from 'B-/RR4'.

Approximately $1.1 billion of debt is affected. The Outlook is Stable.

The upgrade reflects the utility's improved credit profile and improved recovery prospects as a result of ILA's debt reduction and restructuring efforts during the past year. Using proceeds from utility and non-utility asset sales, ILA has reduced debt and debt equivalents by approximately $720 million. Fitch's recovery methodology uses a distressed multiple to determine enterprise valuation. This methodology also considers debt equivalents, like tolling agreements, on a net present value basis.

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The Stable Rating Outlook reflects Fitch's expectation that ILA's credit metrics will remain within parameters for the 'B' rating category over the next year. Cash flow from operations should benefit from lower working capital needs due to lower commodity prices, lower interest expense due to the retired debt, and lower extraordinary tax payments from the gain on sale of assets.

Further debt reductions are possible using proceeds from the sale of ILA's Kansas electric utility, offset by higher capital spending for the Iatan facility funded by a secured bank line. The Kansas utility sale is expected to close for approximately $255 million, exclusive of any working capital adjustments. ILA recently filed in Missouri for an increase in base rates and the implementation of a fuel cost recovery mechanism. The filing also includes a request for recovery of a generation facility like the Aries power project that ILA recently announced it would purchase from Calpine for $158.5 million. Further debt reductions or a favorable outcome in the rate case would improve credit metrics and could result in a ratings upgrade.

ILA is a regulated electric and gas utility serving more than 460,000 electric and 900,000 natural gas customers in five Midwestern states.

Fitch's Recovery Ratings (RR), introduced in 2005, are a relative indicator of creditor recovery on a given obligation in the event of a default. A broad overview of Fitch's RR methodology as it relates to specific sectors, including a Case Study webcast, can be found at www.fitchratings.com/recovery.

Fitch's rating definitions and the terms of such ratings are available on the agency's public site, www.fitchratings.com. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies are available from this site, at all times. Fitch's code of conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, affiliate firewall, compliance and other relevant policies and procedures are also available from the 'Code of Conduct' section of this site.

(Buffalo News, The (NY) (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Oct. 2--Eight years into the effort to consolidate regional business marketing into the Buffalo Niagara Enterprise effort, the BNE is claiming progress and a number of "wins." But the best review of all came from a corporate economic development expert who works with, not for, the agency: The real gain, she said, comes not in a count of recruiting successes but in the agency's completion of the "grunt work" that makes it easier for companies to consider this region.

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That hasn't always been the case, and that assessment is a critical one. Buffalo Niagara has enough regulatory and taxation hurdles to clear without making it difficult for potential job-providers to quickly evaluate local sites. It's good news that Buffalo Niagara Enterprise has pulled together the data and studies to offer businesses before they have to ask for them. That's a competitive edge, because it's not done everywhere.

The BNE's integrated Web site, www.buffaloniagara.org, brings information together for site selectors. Its regional portal now is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese and soon Japanese, providing for a much wider global reach.

Started years ago with an unrealistically high promise of new job creation, Buffalo Niagara Enterprise has refocused on job retention as well as job creation, and has become the "marketer" for the business-development "product" of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership. While some may dispute the level of involvement in some of the 38 "wins" the group claimed for fiscal year 2006, which ended June 30, without Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, companies considering this region would be betting on a hodgepodge of facts and figures with less help in harnessing that information and helping push through deals.

The 38 wins, according to the group, represent a 5.5 percent increase over the previous year's 36 victories. That fiscal 2005 total was more than twice the number of "wins" for Kansas City, Phoenix, Richmond or St. Louis.

In hard numbers, that means last year's work meant $258.2 million in new capital investment in the region, a 12.7 percent increase from the previous year, with the creation or retention of 3,436 jobs -- 1,384 that remained and 2,052 added.

The BNE now focuses on speed, predictability and shovel-ready sites. As it increases the comfort level for potential investors in this region, it can help build momentum; companies notice where other companies are starting to relocate, and a good marketing agency can help them quickly find out why.

The good news here is that there is far more teamwork in that region-selling effort than there once was, and that Buffalo Niagara Enterprise is working to be ready with immediate and detailed information that companies need to know.

Copyright (c) 2006, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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ALLENDALE, N.J. --(Business Wire)-- Control Associates Incorporated and Incuity Software, Inc. announced today they will conduct a joint workshop for manufacturing executives, on October 19, 2006, to help them learn how to make better business decisions that can optimize their companies' productivity and profitability.

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"This free workshop is ideal for both decision makers and decision implementers in any manufacturing company, including people in production, operations, plant management, engineering and IT management," said Terry Spaeth, Control Associates Senior Vice President. "There will be two sessions per workshop, one covering the business problems that the Incuity EMI software can help people solve and one covering the more technical aspects of how to configure applications to do that."

"Anyone in the business of manufacturing knows the roadblocks encountered in attempting to link plant floor systems with enterprise applications," said Gary Wilson, Incuity Vice President of Sales. "The first half of the workshop will cover how users can resolve issues such as leveraging legacy historians; compliance management; downtime/OEE analysis and reports; product analysis and reporting; key performance indicator (KPI) support and dashboards; manufacturing integration with ERP systems; and enhanced supply chain visibility.

"The second half will explain how to access, correlate, analyze, visualize and act on manufacturing and business data from all the systems in a manufacturing enterprise," Wilson added.

The Control Associates-Incuity workshop begins with a continental breakfast, registration and networking at 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, Oct. 19, at the Control Associates offices (20 Commerce Drive) in Allendale. The first half of the program, starting at 10:00 a.m., will cover the enterprise issues involved with truly linking plant floor manufacturing operations with enterprise computing applications. Following lunch, the second session, at 1:00 p.m., will provide an overview of web services, data source connectivity, databases, advanced trending, X-Y plotting tools, Excel reports, web portals, dashboards and a unified production model.

Anyone interested in attending the seminar should go directly to the Control Associates web site at www.control-associates.com to get more details on the workshop and to register online. Seating is limited for these special events, so people are urged to sign up early so they don't miss out.

About Control Associates

Founded in 1933, Control Associates is based in Allendale, New Jersey, and serves industrial customers throughout the northern New Jersey, greater New York City and central and western Connecticut region. The company offers a broad range of expertise in the process industries, such as specialty chemicals, life sciences, natural gas distribution, power generation, hydrocarbon processing, food and beverage, water treatment, and pulp and paper. Among its major customers are well-known companies including Akzo-Nobel, Amerada Hess, American Sugar Refining, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Con Edison, ConocoPhillips, Hercules, Merck, New Jersey Natural Gas, PSE&G and Wyeth. For more information about the company, please visit its web site at: http://www.control-associates.com.

About Incuity

Incuity Software, based in Mission Viejo, California, is a pioneer in the creation of data management systems for reporting, analysis and business intelligence applications in manufacturing and process companies. More than 45,000 seats of the company's products have been installed since 1998, in 13 languages and in more than 40 countries. In addition to its headquarters operations in California, Incuity has regional offices in Nevada and Massachusetts in the U.S. as well as in Sydney, Australia; Duesseldorf, Germany; and Johannesburg, South Africa. The company also maintains a Professional Services group in Burlington, ON, Canada.

For additional information about the company and Incuity products, or for a complete list of value-added resellers around the world, please visit the corporate web site at http://www.incuity.com.

(UPI Business News Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Canadian software maker Open Text Corp. is paying about $489 million to buy Hummingbird Ltd., a smaller domestic rival.

The cash-and-debt deal results in the formation of the world's largest independent provider of enterprise content management software, Open Text said Monday.

The deal was financed with about $58 million in cash from Hummingbird, $25 million in cash from Open Text and a $390 million term loan under new $465 million senior secured revolving and term credit facilities. The $75 million committed revolving term credit facility replaces a smaller revolving credit facility that was terminated.

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The seven-year term loan may be prepaid and the revolving credit facility has a five-year term.

Hummingbird's chairman, Fred Sorkin and its chief executive, Barry Litwin, have left the combined company.

Copyright 2006 United Press International

RESTON, Va. --(Business Wire)-- CorasWorks Corporation, the leading provider of workplace application software on the Microsoft(R) platform, today announced the release of the CorasWorks Workplace Suite(TM) - Summer 2006 edition. With this latest release, CorasWorks advances the ability of enterprise application architects to design robust applications that are inter-connected as part of an integrated workplace running on the Microsoft SharePoint platform - all without any custom development.

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For many CorasWorks customers the investment in the CorasWorks Workplace Suite is easily justified by the lower total cost of ownership for the applications they build using its modular architecture. On average, organizations see an 80% cost savings compared to building their applications using custom development. Yet, for many enterprise organizations, their application designs continue to be constrained by the lack of skilled resources within their in-house development teams.

CorasWorks' Summer 2006 release breaks this constraint and advances application design within the enterprise by delivering:

-- Parent-Child Relationships for better data organization: CorasWorks' new Cross-Connect(TM) module allows users to create parent-child relational joins from two lists or libraries and relate them on a common field or data. The lists can be stored in separate locations throughout the workplace.

-- A familiar and flexible application interface with more power to take action and get work done: With the new release, application designers can create actions that allow end users to enter information and make decisions whenever an action is run. Also, users can do data entry to add or change information across their workplace without needing to jump from one application to another.

-- Support for role-based dashboards: Role-based dashboards or "personas" allow application architects to design optimized role-based interfaces providing the information and functionality required for a given role and interaction with information located throughout the workplace.

-- Distributable, reusable Workplace Features: Application designers can distribute commonly used features from an application to any location throughout the workplace, enabling users to do their work from where they work.

-- Ability to centrally define scopes of information that may be consumed throughout the workplace in dashboards, portals, personas, and individual views.

-- Centralized workplace configuration management: Allow application architects to define and connect distributed elements of information and functionality across a workplace.

-- Centralized component configuration management: Enable administrators to establish global or regional policies for how the distributed, end-user components of the workplace behave.

"Empowering organizations to create an inter-connected workplace of robust, enterprise-wide applications without custom development or extensive technical skills or knowledge is the driving objective of every release of the Workplace Suite," said William Rogers, CEO of CorasWorks "The Summer 2006 releases greatly advances the potential of workplace application designers to create a more powerful set of applications, while vastly increasing the ease, convenience, and relevance to end-users. With great cost effectiveness, it continues to drive forward the value proposition of modular software architecture over custom development or off-the-shelf point solutions."

To further help application architects leverage the advanced capabilities and technologies of the Summer 2006 release, CorasWorks also greatly enhanced the Solution Set included in the product. The CorasWorks Workplace Suite now includes 51 templated solutions comprised of Workplace Foundation elements and Business Solutions. Workplace Foundation elements are templatized core building blocks for designing and deploying elements of a collaborative workplace. The included Business Solutions are segmented into four categories: Project Oriented, Classic Line of Business, Departmental, and Approval Processes. They can each be used as is or easily customized to meet the needs of the organization.

Visit our new CorasWorks Showroom (http://solutions.corasworks.net/) to learn more about the Summer 2006 release of the CorasWorks Workplace Suite. For details on accessing or upgrading to Summer 2006, please contact [email protected] or 1-866-580-3115 (toll free) or 1-703-797-1881 (for local or international).

About CorasWorks

CorasWorks Corporation is the leading worldwide provider of workplace application software on the Microsoft SharePoint collaboration platform. CorasWorks products are being used every day by more than 700 customers and 500,000 deployed users. Enterprise, corporate, non-profit, and government organizations in more than 20 countries around the world use CorasWorks software to build powerful and flexible integrated business workplaces, without custom development. The CorasWorks Partner Program no has more than 70 partners certified to assist customers in implementing, designing and building their workplaces on SharePoint. For more information, visit www.corasworks.net.

(Comtex Business Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) WASHINGTON, Oct 2, 2006 (U.S. Newswire via COMTEX) --The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will hold a field hearing in Los Angeles on Tuesday to discuss media ownership. FreedomWorks is showing up to protect the first amendment and the free enterprise system.

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Today's communications market is thriving. Cable, satellite and broadband providers compete directly with incumbent broadcasters for programming. This competition benefits consumers through more choices in programming with a wide variety of media outlets.

FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey commented, "Broadcast media is not the dominant source of news and information it used to be, and new broadband technologies will do even more to challenge incumbent broadcasters. But for anti-market advocates, it represents their last viable opportunity to use the power of government to force us to listen to them. The government can take positive steps to help all viewers and listeners, by not by taking control of the airwaves. The government can move to increase competition and choice by removing archaic laws that are out of step with the fundamental changes occurring in the marketplace."

FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe added, "The opponents of the free market are calling for new restrictions and government intervention in the media that will ultimately reduce the choices available to American families. Proponents of more regulation argue that media consolidation constrains the free flow of information to Americans, yet they practice a very sophisticated form of democratic activism with only a minimal use of mainstream media. The irony speaks volumes for their position."

-----

FreedomWorks is a grassroots organization with over 800,000 members nationwide, dedicated to lower taxes, less government and more freedom.

http://www.usnewswire.com

Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, 202-942-7698, or
[email protected]

Copyright (C) 2006, U.S. Newswire

SAN JOSE, Calif. & PARIS --(Business Wire)-- Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced it has closed the acquisition of privately-held Armstrong Laing Limited (ALG Software), a leading provider of profitability management and activity based costing solutions.

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"The acquisition of ALG Software demonstrates our commitment to bringing a complete range of enterprise performance management solutions to our customers," said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. "Our customers have told us that the ability to generate improved profitability and control costs is fast becoming one of their top priorities. By adding the leading provider of these solutions to our portfolio, we significantly broaden and deepen our EPM capabilities for our customers, and particularly, for the CFO and finance departments."

The acquisition was an all-cash transaction of approximately 30 million GBP (approximately $56 million USD) for all outstanding shares of ALG Software by Business Objects (U.K.) Limited, a Business Objects wholly owned U.K. subsidiary, and will be accounted for under the purchase method of accounting. Total revenue for ALG Software was approximately $19 million for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2006.

With the addition of ALG Software, Business Objects expands its enterprise performance management (EPM) software portfolio with solutions for profitability management, activity based costing, predictive planning, and strategic business performance measurement. ALG Software's profitability management and activity based costing solutions represent a fast-growing segment of the EPM market and complement the existing Business Objects EPM solutions. Today, more than 400 customers worldwide use ALG Software's solutions, including American Express, British Airways, British Telecom, Heineken, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, US Department of Labor, and WHSmith.

Business Objects plans to announce further details on the integration of ALG Software in November, from the Business Objects Insight Americas 2006 User Conference in San Francisco.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 39,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company's innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at www.businessobjects.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This document contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning Business Objects' products and services, ALG Software's EPM solutions, the benefits to customers from the acquisition, Business Objects' position in the EPM market, and impact of the transaction on Business Objects' financial results. Actual events or results may differ materially from those described in this document due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others: the tax impact of the acquisition on Business Objects, Business Objects' ability to retain ALG Software's employees, and Business Objects' ability to realize other financial benefits from the proposed acquisition. More information about potential factors that could affect Business Objects' business and financial results is included in Business Objects' Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2006 and Business Objects Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005, which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and available at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Business Objects is not obligated to and does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this document.

The Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Xcelsius are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SALT LAKE CITY, Oct. 2 -- UCN, Inc. (BULLETIN BOARD: UCNN) , a provider of on-demand contact handling software and business telecommunication services delivered over the UCN national VoIP network, today announced a partnership with MetTel (Metropolitan Telecommunications), a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC) based in New York City. Under the terms of the signed agreement, the two companies will interconnect their respective networks, enabling MetTel to sell UCN's inContact(TM) application services into its customer base.

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With this announcement, MetTel customers gain access to leading edge, hosted contact handling capabilities that improve customer contact quality and rep productivity, without having to take on the costs associated with the installation, integration and maintenance of onsite software and hardware.

This is not the first relationship between the two companies. In June 2005 UCN announced that MetTel had selected inContact to support its own internal customer care operation, located in two geographically dispersed offices. The inContact system provides MetTel with a unified set of contact handling and management tools, helping the customer care teams hit their target service level numbers while decreasing overall operational costs. Again, in December 2005, UCN and MetTel were in the news, when MetTel avoided a business interruption situation due to the New York City transit strike. The morning of the strike, inContact enabled MetTel to implement its disaster recovery plan and seamlessly route service calls to the homes of 50 percent of the customer care team who knew they would be stranded at home by the strike.

MetTel serves over 16,500 consumer and business clients, with more than 185,000 phone lines nationwide. The company specializes in serving multi-state, multi-location enterprise accounts.

Said MetTel CEO, Marshall Aronow: "The inContact system complements our suite of services by providing an enterprise class solution for our customers. This combination enhances the total value of MetTel's competitive offerings."

Kevin Childs, UCN president of sales, marketing and support said: "With this new connectivity model, MetTel customers can have both their existing long distance and local numbers managed by the intelligent contact handling services of inContact. They don't have to change a thing. From a business perspective, by partnering with an established, trusted CLEC such as MetTel, UCN gains access to a nationwide market of existing business accounts. As many of these accounts are multi-location operations, they are uniquely positioned to benefit from the unifying reporting, monitoring and management functions inherent in inContact."

About MetTel
Founded in 1996, MetTel (Metropolitan Telecommunications) is a privately held nationwide integrated communications provider serving customers from coast-to-coast. MetTel provides a comprehensive portfolio of local, long distance and advanced business and data services, including Internet Access and VoIP solutions to the business market, specializing in multi-state, multi-location enterprise customers. MetTel's innovative and proprietary operations support systems provide leading edge electronic bonding, provisioning, customer care, agent support and billing system capabilities, which have fueled its rapid expansion. Web site: http://www.mettel.net/

About UCN, Inc.
UCN (BULLETIN BOARD: UCNN) is the leading provider of inbound and blended, hosted contact handling services that improve the customer contact experience and the productivity of those handling the contacts. In addition to the integrated suite of advanced contact handling applications, inContact provides reporting, monitoring, recording, administration and workforce management tools. InControl(TM) is a unique, rapid application development tool that enables inContact customers to develop highly flexible, customized business contact handling processes in record time. To learn more about UCN visit http://www.ucn.net/.

Safe Harbor Statement: The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor for forward-looking information made on the Company's behalf. All statements, other than statements of historical facts which address the Company's expectations of sources of capital or which express the Company's expectation for the future with respect to financial performance or operating strategies, can be identified as forward-looking statements. Such statements made by the company are based on knowledge of the environment in which it operates, but because of the factors previously listed, as well as other factors beyond the control of the Company, actual results may differ materially from the expectations expressed in the forward-looking statements.

UCN, Inc.

CONTACT: Jan Johnson, VP of Marketing of UCN, +1-801-320-3263,[email protected]; or investors, Scott Liolios, [email protected], or RonBoth, of Liolios Group Inc, +1-949-574-3860, for UCN; or Sue Salmansohn,Marketing Director of MetTel, +1-212-607-2012, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.mettel.net/
Web site: http://www.ucn.net/

(Daily Variety Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)
TORONTO One of the nastiest scraps to hit the Canadian film scene in recent years received a storybook ending as outspoken distribution impresario Victor Loewy and Motion Picture Distribution reached a settlement.

Deal makes Loewy, the former MPD chairman who quit in July, an independent consultant to the company with the title of chairman emeritus. His primary responsibility will be MPD's lucrative output deal with New Line.

An income trust controlled by Toronto-based Alliance Atlantis Communications, MPD is Canada's largest distributor, sporting output deals with New Line, Focus Features, Miramax and the Weinstein Co. MDP also owns Momentum Pictures in the U.K. and Aurum in Spain.

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The New Line output deal contains a "key man clause" citing Loewy that put the contract in jeopardy when Loewy ankled.

New Line confirmed on Friday that it will continue its output agreement with MPD until the end of 2008 --- the same time Loewy's agreement expires --- though the company retains the option to walk away if Loewy leaves.

"We are delighted to be able to continue our longstanding supply arrangement with New Line and are looking forward to working with Victor in his new capacity," said MPD chief exec John Bailey.

MPD is also dropping its court action against former CEO Patrice Theroux and general counsel Paul Laberge, who were fired in July. They are rumored to be receiving an unspecified financial package.

All three settlements include confidentiality and non-compete covenants.

Loewy, Theroux and Laberge could not be reached for comment.

"We are pleased to have resolved matters with Patrice and Paul and wish them well in their future endeavors," said David Lazzarato, MPD chairman of the board.

Industry observers say it is in everyone's interest to "play nice" to stabilize company's market trading so that MPD, which will soon be up for sale, can fetch the best price possible.

London-based Marwyn Investments went public in August with notice of a cash offer of C$394 million-C$414 million ($353 million-$371 million) for MPD that would see Loewy, Theroux and Laberge head up the enterprise.

AAC has said it will not sell MPD until it completes a strategic review of the company.

In a terse statement giving the Loewy/MDP settlement two thumbs up, AAC promised to complete its review "as soon as possible."

Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information - US

(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) BT is reinforcing its status as a global force just as other incumbents in Europe are wrestling with their domestic strategies. Last month the UK operator announced plans to double its revenue in key IT services markets over the next three years by looking further outside its UK and Western European bases.

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Other incumbents might do well to follow BTs lead, or even take more radical measures. Australias Telstra, struggling for ways to grow in its home market, is showing signs of reinforcing its play in Asia (see p.26). Analysts even hint that it could pull back from its domestic commitments following deadlock with the regulator. Deutsche Telekom is having troubles at home too, as our cover story shows, and admits that it will need to turn increasingly to international revenue growth.

Some analysts say BT has benefited from pulling back from its earlier stated ambition to compete directly with big integration companies such as IBM and Accenture. They are now being more realistic, said Chris Lewis, enterprise practice leader at Ovum. In its initial statement about ICT, it was aiming for the stars. What theyve got, is closer to the sky.

BT declined to comment on what percentage of its Global Services business is pure IT services, but says it has won just under 1,000 new customers in 15 months.

Key growth is expected in the US, Japan, India and China. Those markets currently are worth some 750 million to the company said Andy Green, CEO of BT Global Services. He added that one of the largest sources of growth is among South Korean companies looking towards global expansion.

BT forecasts its German and Italian markets will generate revenue of E1 billion by 2009. BT acquired Fiats telecoms subsidiary Atlanet for E80 million last December and announced a global services contract with the Italian car manufacturer worth E450 million. Also last year, BT took full control of Italian network operator Albacom from partners including Eni and Mediaset. BT said Albacom generated some E650 million in revenues last year.

One of BTs biggest managed services contracts, with multinational retail company Unilever, was extended in September through a new global managed firewall deal worth 10.5 million. BTs original contract with Unilever for voice, data and mobile, awarded in 2002, was the first billion-euro managed services contract for a telco in Europe. In May, BT was awarded an extension to the original seven-year outsourcing contract, worth around 270 million over an extra three years.

BT says Global Services revenues grew by 4% in the first quarter of 2006, to 2.2 billion. Other significant contract wins include Reuters, the National Health Service, the Ministry of Defence, Hertz and Philips.

BT is anticipating 15% growth year-on-year, driven by global services. That will be achieved by organic growth and some acquisitions that will help us or our geographic capability, said Green.

BT says its global 21st century infrastructure will be a key differentiator. It expects to have IP services in 160 countries by the end of 2007, up from 128 at present. The number of dual points of presence in cities will increase from 12 to 28. There is no interest to have separate pockets of MPLS, said Green. Global companies want end-to-end service management.

Under the terms of the new agreement with Unilever, BT will take full control of the companys firewalls, which are spread throughout 68 countries. The current regionally managed model will be brought under one operation in the network IT services operation.

Unilever says it has made cost reductions of 20% since it first signed an agreement with BT, which has now changed from being a supplier to a partner according to Neil Cameron, chief information officer at Unilever.

Cameron said Unilever did not re-tender the contract. We could have got it cheaper, but price is not the only importance, he said. We need to know that they are going to deliver.

To prise Unilever away from BT is now I would say well nigh impossible, said Janet Watkins, director of Telemark Services, which tracks customer care performance of managed services providers. BT is prepared to put so much into the arrangement, and that is down to Andy Green.

BT Global Services also aims to deliver annual cost savings of 400 million by the financial year ending March 2009.

Green said the reductions would come from reduced third party costs of around 200 million. A further 100 million would come from taking advantage of a global workforce; eliminating the duplication of jobs will save 50 million as well as securing repeat contracts, he said.

Green cites Orange, AT&T and Verizon as key competitors in the global services market.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd

(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) One of the building blocks of fixed-mobile convergence is set for a short shelf life despite some low-key launches by several of Europes operators.

Telecom Italia was the latest to go to market with unlicensed mobile access (UMA) technology, but you could be forgiven for having missed the announcement. Last month it quietly launched its long-awaited offer under the brand name Unica.

Neither was there much fanfare when TeliaSonera launched its Home Free UMA service in Denmark, in August.

Telecom Italia finally got the go-ahead to launch Unica after a lengthy altercation with the regulator. Even now it is restricted to a six-month experimental service and allowed to sign up just 30,000 customers.

We have started the service, a spokesperson for Telecom Italia confirmed, but the regulator has prevented us from starting a natural service.

Telecom Italia remains tight-lipped on what will happen when the six months are up. The spokesperson insists the convergence is still going ahead, despite its recent change of strategy and personnel.

Customer demand for UMA services is far from proven. It took BT seven months to sign up 30,000 customers to its UMA service, Fusion. Homezone-style fixed-mobile substitution services from mobile operatorswhich essentially target the same demographichave seen significantly faster take-up. T-Mobile in Germany racked up 1 million customers to its @Home offer in half the time.

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[Fusions] benefits sound uncannily like that of a mobile phone, said Phil Kendall, director, wireless network strategies at Strategy Analytics at the UMA Services and Technology Forum in London in September. He believes the key driver for UMA is to enable fixed-line operators to compete with aggressively-priced mobile bundles and homezone services.

Kerry Ritz, managing director of Vonage UK, agreed that operators, not consumers, are driving UMA. Theres not a demand from customers for FMC, he said.

Kendall predicts there will be 2 million UMA handset shipments this year, rising to 70 million by 2010. This will trail off as IP multimedia subsystem (IMS) technology picks up.

But some have a much bleaker prognosis. UMA has a small window of opportunity and that window is getting smaller, said Dean Bubley, principal analyst at Disruptive Analysis. I think it will fail outright.

Andrea Lagana, head of Telecom Italias home network and handset innovation unit, painted a different picture at the UMA Forum. A lot of people say UMA has a very limited timeframe[but] Im not completely sure it will be like that, he said. Once you introduce a technology, its not easy to switch it off.

TeliaSonera is considering how we can exploit the same services based on UMA, in other Nordic markets, said Peter Bredgaard, VP of business development. But he concedes it is unlikely to be a long-term service. I cannot for sure say we will run this five years from now. Probably not, he said.

UMA enables TeliaSonera to move away from the service provider business into our own network, said Bredgaard. You can get rid of your current PSTN subscription with this service, and customers can use any providers broadband connection with Home Free.

We are not using this as a tool to get more broadband, he insisted. The main driver is actually to get more market share of the mobile minutes.

To date, operators have concentrated on consumer UMA services. But last month BT revealed plans to launch a corporate version of Fusion in early 2007.

UMA is absolutely a viable enabler to enterprise mobility, said Talbot Hardy, CTO of Network Equipment Technologies. Enterprise UMA will live longer than expected.

Both Telecom Italia and TeliaSonera launched UMA with just one handset, the Samsung P200. Handsets are one of the most critical issues, said Lagana.

TeliaSonera has gone some way to tackling the problem by making Home Free compatible with GSM handsets. The service supports up to five mobile users per contract; just one is required to have a UMA handset.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd

(Total Telecom Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) One door down from the entrance to Belgacoms head office is an airy, high-ceilinged glass cylinder, housing a Belgacom shop. Enticements for passers-by include three months of free IPTV.

Television is the central pillar of Belgacoms domestic strategy. Like all of Europes incumbent operators, its voice revenues are declining and mobile growth is slowing down. Belgacom lost 59,000 lines in the second quarter of 2006compared to 26,000 in the first quarterwhile mobile revenues fell 1.5% year on year to 1.07 billion in the first six months.

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Belgacom has done some international deals: in March 2005 it combined its international wholesale operations with those of Swisscom. But the domestic market remains its main focus.

In August, Belgacom bought Vodafones 25% stake in Proximus for 2 billion, giving it full control of the Belgian mobile operator, raising expectations it would develop a fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) strategy. But like Telecom Italia, Belgiums incumbent stresses that there is more than one way to offer service bundles.

The market expects some synergies out of the Proximus deal, says William Mosseray, chief strategy officer. That doesnt mean we have to put everything together. Right now we are a fixed company and a mobile company, and I dont know if that will change. The jury is still out [on fixed-mobile convergence], although we might not want to wait until the jury decides. It might be too late.

That did not stop it highlighting FMC trends in a statement in June, while outlining its strategy for its newly acquired national ICT company, Telindus. The corporate ICT market is in full transition phase, showing a strong convergence (voice/data, fixed/mobile), a strong trend towards outsourcing and a commoditization of ICT, the company said.

Telindus was finally captured in January for an initial price of some 600 million following a bidding war against France Telecom. Acquiring Telindus was an extremely important move for bolstering enterprise ICT services nationally, says Mosseray. But he insists it is not part of a bigger international services strategy.

Although Belgacom will support customers which outsource back-office operations in eastern Europe, for example, it will do so by leasing facilities and employing staff according to customer needs.

There are trends to outsource in eastern European countries. We may develop that according to the needs of our large customers. But it will be project based; we are not Equant.

Benoit Denis, consultant, ICT Practices, at Frost and Sullivan, suggests the carrier is too cautious with emerging markets. But he adds: They dont have the financial means to have an international strategy.

Raising the stakes

In fact, private equity money has raised the stakes for some possible acquisitions, in some cases forcing Belgacom to rein in its strategy. We dont want to do crazy things and pay crazy multiples, Mosseray says. Maybe the bubble is not as large as the Internet bubble, but there is one. I dont want to be in the centre when it explodes.

In August the company announced it would sell its 5.8% stake in French operator Neuf Cegetel to SFR for 187 million because it could not gain a majority share. It doesnt mean we put a cross through France or other countries, adds Mosseray.

The fact that Belgacom50% owned by the state which has a 53.14% voting rightis not full master of its destiny was emphasised last month when the Belgian prime minister urged it to seek partnerships.

The Belgian state doesnt want a private equity buyout, suggests Goldman Sachs. Its analysts say Belgacom has an equity market capitalisation of 9.7 billion; that compares to a valuation of 19 billion for Netherlands operator KPN.

The Belgian state may be keen to explore their options for Belgacom in the event of any change in the law to allow the state to sell their controlling interest, say the analysts. We believe it is possible that the Belgian state may be looking for options and partners that would allow Belgacom to become larger to avoid it being perceived as a target for private equity interests.

That law wont change before Belgian elections in 2007, but Belgacom recognises consolidation could affect it.

Its the strategic challenge of a mid-sized operator in Western Europe. We have no reason to say were in big trouble and should do something, says Mosseray. But the world around us is also moving. Does it make sense to combine forces? NGN investments might be a triggering factor.

Currently, there are no plans for fibre-to-the-home network investments. We dont believe today that FTTH makes sense, says Mosseray.

In the meantime it is continuing with other domestic investments, particularly with costly IPTV deployment. Belgacom said in its first-quarter financial report that TV operations would have an estimated negative EBITDA impact of about 3040 million in 2006, with ARPU at around 13.

The service, which is included in the carriers fixed-line business, had a negative EBITDA contribution of 11 million in Q1, and generated revenue of 2 million. Net ARPU was 11.9, and capex for the TV service was up to 19 million.

Mosseray expects IPTV to be unprofitable for two more years. But some think the digital TV service will be a cash drain until at least 2015.

Obviously its not going to generate margins of 30%, 40%, 50%, [like those] of traditional voice, says Mosseray. And there are challenges. Acquiring the right content is difficult, he concedes.

By the end of June Belgacom had 74,000 subscribers to its TV service, and is targeting 100,000 users by the end of the year.

IPTV is the right way for Belgacom to go, argues Benoit at Frost and Sullivan. Belgium is a small, densely populated country, making it cheaper per inhabitant to develop the network than in many other European countries, he says.

Currently, Belgacom is upgrading the Proximus 3G network with HSDPA technology to provide broadband mobile services by the end of the year.

Copyright 2006 Terrapinn Ltd

(BNamericas.com Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) US security software giant Symantec sees Latin America as the region leading the company's growth in the Americas, Argentine newspaper El Cronista reported Symantec VP for Latin America, Wilson Grava as saying.

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"At this moment, Latin America is leading the growth in the continent. It is a market in expansion and we currently have [growth] rates of 30%, above rates registered in the US and Canada," the paper quoted Grava as saying.

The executive said multinational companies and government agencies are among Symantec's major clients in the region and the company's consulting and services unit has grown as customers require complete management of their security infrastructure.

Grava said that Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Argentina are the biggest markets for the company in the region.

Symantec saw its net profit fall nearly 52% to US$95mn in the first quarter of fiscal year 2007, ended June 30, compared to US$199mn in the same period last year.

The Americas region, including the United States, Latin America and Canada, contributed 55% of total revenue but declined 1% year-over-year, BNamericas previously reported. Revenue for the period came in at US$1.26bn, up 80% year-on-year.

Headquartered in Cupertino, California, Symantec provides a broad range of content and network security software and appliance solutions to enterprises, individuals and service providers. Products include solutions for management of data, application and infrastructure, security, and storage and service, as well as enterprise and consumer security and response and managed security services.

Copyright 2006 BNamericas.com

SANTA CLARA, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- SigmaQuest(TM) Inc., the leading provider of software for managing product quality throughout manufacturing and a product's lifecycle, today announced that Manufacturing Business Technology has named SigmaQuest in its top "40 Emerging Software Vendors" list.

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The company received this award for the second year in a row and will appear in the October 2006 issue of Managing Business Technology.

The publication's 40 list, which is compiled by senior editors, names up-and-coming vendors impacting enterprise, production, product development and supply chain management processes.

"Being recognized by Manufacturing Business Technology as one of the top 40 software vendors for a second year in a row is one of the many outstanding accomplishments we have achieved this year," said Nader Fathi CEO of SigmaQuest. "SigmaQuest has been heralded as a technology leader in helping customers manage product quality, and we are proud to add the recognition as one of the Top 40 Emerging Software Vendors to our list of recent achievements."

The Top 40 Emerging Vendors are featured in the October 2006 issue of Manufacturing Business Technology magazine and is available online at http://www.mbtmag.com/emergingvendors/40EmergingVendors_2006.pdf.

About Manufacturing Business Technology

Manufacturing Business Technology, established in 1984, has broad circulation coverage of corporate, IT and operations executives and managers in manufacturing--the buying team responsible for enterprise business and IT investment.

About SigmaQuest

SigmaQuest Inc. is an enterprise software company whose solutions provide unprecedented insight and actionable information to ensure product and process integrity, by collecting, aggregating, controlling and analyzing test and quality data. Its solutions enable global enterprises such as OEMs that design, manufacture, and service a broad array of products ranging from wireless devices to pacemakers to fuel cells, to optimize product time-to-market, cost and quality. This is accomplished through personalized views of product quality information, pro-active alerts and comprehensive traceability -- all in real time.

The company is headquartered at 2901 Tasman Drive, Suite 109, Santa Clara, CA 95054. It can also be reached at 408-654-9401, www.SigmaQuest.com.

SigmaQuest is trademark of SigmaQuest Inc. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

FAIRFAX, Va. --(Business Wire)-- Kforce Government Solutions Inc. ("KGS") (NASDAQ:KFRC), in partnership with Lockheed Martin, has been awarded two task orders under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation ("FDIC") Information Technology Application Services ("ITAS") contract.

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"At KGS, we are proud of our capabilities in the delivery of mission-critical data confidence, as well as our ability to provide highly skilled information technology solutions professionals across the federal government," said Larry Grant, KGS President. "These subcontracts to Lockheed Martin allow KGS to continue as a provider of enterprise data management and application support services to the FDIC."

The first task order is for information management support services to manage the FDIC's corporate data and support its Enterprise Information Management ("EIM") program and activities. The three-year task order specifically covers database administration, enterprise architecture and corporate data sharing initiatives, enterprise architecture repository and digital library. The second task order includes consolidated enhancements support for FDIC's Open Bank systems.

This recent win at Lockheed Martin comes shortly after KGS was awarded a Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") contract to provide information technology management support services under the Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading Edge Solutions ("EAGLE") procurement.

About Kforce Government Solutions, Inc.

Kforce Government Solutions, Inc. ("KGS"), is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kforce Government Holdings Inc., which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Kforce Inc. KGS provides innovative technical and finance and accounting solutions to federal government clients. For more information, visit www.kforcegov.com.

About Kforce Inc.

Kforce Inc. (NASDAQ:KFRC) is a full-service, professional staffing firm providing flexible and permanent staffing solutions for candidates and organizations in the skill areas of technology, finance and accounting, and health and life sciences. Backed by 2,000 staffing specialists, Kforce (www.kforce.com) operates with 76 offices in 43 markets in North America.

Certain of the above statements contained in this press release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, as amended. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include the following: business conditions and growth in the staffing industry and general economy; competitive factors, risks due to shifts in market demand, including, without limitation, shifts in demand for our Government Solutions, Health and Life Sciences, Finance and Accounting and Technology groups, as well as the market for search and flexible staffing assignments; changes in the service mix; ability of the Firm to complete acquisitions; and the risk factors listed from time to time in the Firm's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as assumptions regarding the foregoing. In particular, there can be no assurance that the above estimates of revenues and earnings per share will be achieved. The words "should," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "foresee," "plan" and similar expressions and variations thereof identify certain of such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates on which they were made. Additionally, any statements related to future services to be provided to federal agencies are forward-looking statements. The Firm undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. As a result, such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

TAMPA, Fla. --(Business Wire)-- Kforce Inc. (NASDAQ:KFRC), a professional staffing firm, today announced the completion of a transaction to acquire Bradson Corporation, a privately held company based in Arlington, Virginia. Bradson has been a prime contractor of finance & accounting professional services to the federal government for over 20 years. Bradson's primary customers include the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.

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Bradson produced revenue of approximately $26.6 million for the twelve months ended June 30, 2006 and is expected to generate approximately $30.6 million in revenue in calendar 2006. EBITDA for the six month period ended June 30, 2006 was approximately $5.2 million and for calendar 2006 EBITDA is expected to be approximately $11.1 million. A Kforce subsidiary (Kforce Government Holdings, Inc.) will pay $73 million for 100% of the stock of Bradson. Kforce, on a consolidated basis, also expects to realize a future cash tax benefit with a net present value of approximately $13 million as a result of the election to classify the transaction as an asset sale for tax purposes under section 338(h)(10) of the IRS code. In addition, the transaction was subject to Bradson delivering $4 million in working capital at the time of closing. The transaction was financed through proceeds from the Firm's recently amended Credit Facility. Subsequent to closing, Kforce had approximately $106 million of debt outstanding. Kforce anticipates modest integration expenses and believes the transaction will be accretive for 2007.

David L. Dunkel, Kforce's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said, "We are very pleased to finalize the acquisition and welcome the highly talented professionals from Bradson to the Kforce family. We believe this step is a significant enhancement of the Kforce footprint in the prime federal government sector, particularly in the federal finance and accounting discipline. We believe we have now completed our strategy of acquiring a federal government services platform. We expect Bradson's unique characteristics, capabilities and assets will bring our prime and subcontract revenues to over $100 million annually. We also expect to achieve organic growth as Bradson is integrated and the synergies of our entire Kforce Government Solutions Group are captured." Ron Bradley, former majority shareholder and President of Bradson stated, "I am very proud of our many achievements and I am confident that under David Halstead's leadership the entire team will prosper from the many resources that Kforce will provide them. We are very impressed with the Kforce culture of Great People = Great Results."

William L. Sanders, Kforce's President said, "Bradson has an outstanding reputation in the federal government sector. The Bradson leadership team, project managers and employees are outstanding and have expertise and relationships that compliment our existing business." Mr. Sanders continued, "Kforce Government Holdings, Inc. is now led by Pat Moneymaker and its two subsidiaries are led by Presidents David Halstead and Larry Grant. We believe this management team is outstanding and now has the scale and expertise for market appreciation to drive organic growth."

Kforce will host a conference call Tuesday, October 3, 2006 to discuss this acquisition. The call will begin at 11:00 AM EST. The dial-in number is 888-202-2422 (Please request to be connected to the Kforce Bradson Call). The replay of the call will be available from 12:00 PM EDT October 3, 2006 through October 17, 2006, by dialing 888-203-1112, passcode 4775902.

It will also be webcast live at www.kforce.com (select "Investor Relations") and will be available for webcast replay until October 17, 2006. We would encourage you to access the corresponding PowerPoint presentation at www.kforce.com (select "Investor Relations") prior to accessing the conference call.

The webcast is also being distributed over CCBN's Investor Distribution Network to both institutional and individual investors. Individual investors can listen to the call through CCBN's individual investor center at www.earnings.com or by visiting any of the investor sites in CCBN's Individual Investor Network. Institutional investors can access the call via CCBN's password-protected event management site, StreetEvents (www.streetevents.com).

About Kforce Inc.

Kforce Inc. (NASDAQ: KFRC) is a full-service, professional staffing firm providing flexible and permanent staffing solutions for candidates and organizations in the skill areas of technology, finance and accounting, and health and life sciences. Backed by 2,000 staffing specialists, Kforce (www.kforce.com) operates with 76 offices in 43 markets in North America.

About Kforce Government Holdings Inc.

Kforce Government Holdings, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Kforce Inc. (NASDAQ: KFRC), provides innovative technical solutions to federal government clients through its two subsidiaries, Kforce Government Solutions, Inc. ("KGS") and Bradson Corporation. Specifically, KGS focuses on vitalizing clients' Data Confidence(SM) with DCVector(SM), a solutions delivery program that combines the certainty of CMMI(R) SE/SW Level 3 process maturity with established strategic data management processes and technology solutions built on insights gained through its government data management experience. A technology partner to clients, KGS is a provider of enterprise data architecture, mission critical application development and enterprise data management solutions. For more information, visit www.kforcegov.com.

Certain of the above statements are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Such forward-looking statements are within the meaning of that term in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934, as amended. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include the following: business conditions and growth in the staffing industry and general economy; competitive factors, risks due to shifts in market demand, including, without limitation, shifts in demand for services provided by Kforce Government Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiaries, as well as the market for search and flexible staffing assignments; changes in the service mix; and the risk factors listed from time to time in the Firm's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as assumptions regarding the foregoing. In particular, there can be no assurance that the above transaction will result in any particular revenue or EBITDA level in 2006, that any future tax benefits will be realized, or that any organic growth or synergies will be attained. There is also no assurance that Kforce now has an adequate platform in the government services sector or that Kforce Government Holdings, Inc. and its subsidiaries have an adequate management team with sufficient expertise to drive organic growth. The words "should," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "anticipate," "foresee," "plan" and similar expressions and variations thereof identify certain of such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the dates on which they were made. Additionally, any statements related to future integration of Bradson Corporation and Kforce and the leveraging of Bradson professionals are forward-looking statements. The Firm undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. As a result, such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

YARDLEY, Pa. --(Business Wire)-- Activant Solutions Inc. announces the availability of Activant Prophet 21(TM) version 11.0.

"As one of the leading enterprise software solutions for the distribution industry, Prophet 21 offers distributors a fully scalable solution with proven ROI," said Steve McLaughlin, senior vice president and general manager of Activant's wholesale distribution group. "Prophet 21 version 11.0 includes advanced inventory management and customer relationship management (CRM) functionality, and more than 45 additional features."

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Eric Pargmann, technology utilization manager, of Abatix has been an early adopter of Prophet 21 version 11.0 and has this to say: "With new functionality such as Customer Master Inquiry and Advanced Demand Forecasting, Prophet 21 version 11.0 is going to streamline processes and help us take better advantage of the data in our solution. As early adopters, we've had about 100 users hitting it everyday and the solution has been very stable."

Activant Prophet 21

More than 900 distributors utilize Prophet 21 to help them increase sales, improve customer service, and reduce operating costs throughout their businesses. Activant(R) put its more than three decades of wholesale distribution experience into building the solution, which combines the familiarity of Windows with the depth of SQL Server to provide distributors with an intuitive solution that allows them to easily access their business data to respond quickly to changing market needs.

Features include order management, inventory management, warehouse management, purchasing, financial management, customer relationship management, business reporting and analysis, PDA integration, and e-business. Continually working to meet distributors' changing needs, Activant has established customer advisory committees to help determine what functionality to incorporate in future product releases.

All of Activant's solutions for wholesale distributors go through rigorous quality assurance and field production testing before wide release.

Maximizing Solution Usage

Activant backs Prophet 21 with a full range of professional services designed to help distributors maximize their use of the solution.

An innovative implementation program that includes a customized training agenda ensures that distributors new to Prophet 21 can start benefiting from the solution as soon as they go live. Ongoing solution, technology, and e-business consulting and specially developed Web- and Classroom-Based Training courses allow distributors to continue expanding their knowledge of their solution and training their employees. Support programs, including an online solutions database, a feature-rich Customer Web Site, and online and one-on-one networking programs allows distributors to implement the best practices for their business.

Pricing and Availability

Activant Prophet 21 version 11.0 is currently available. For additional information and pricing, please visit http://distribution.activant.com or call 1-800-776-7438, press 1.

About Activant Solutions Inc.

Activant Solutions Inc. ("Activant") is a leading technology provider of business management solutions serving small and medium-sized retail and wholesale distribution businesses in three primary vertical markets: hardlines and lumber; wholesale distribution; and the automotive parts aftermarket. Founded in 1972, Activant provides customers with tailored proprietary software, professional services, content, supply chain connectivity, and analytics. More than 30,000 customer locations use an Activant solution to manage their day-to-day operations. Activant has operations in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Canada, France, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

For more information, please visit www.activant.com.

The statements contained in this document which are not historical facts are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended, including statements as to industry trends, future products or services, and products or service line growth or performance. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and subject to risks. Actual results may differ materially from the future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such a difference include but are not limited to unrealized market demand for our services, the ability to retain the people performing services, and those risks and uncertainties identified in Activant Solutions Inc.'s most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K which has been filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Activant Solutions Inc. assumes no duty to update information contained in this document at any time.

(C) 2006, Activant Solutions Inc. All rights reserved. Activant and the Activant logo are registered trademarks and Activant Prophet 21 is a trademark of Activant Solutions Inc. All other company or product names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Network Physics, the leader in real-time application performance insight, today announced the availability of the NetSensory Solution Insight for F5's WANJet, an integrated solution that maximizes the ability of IT to extract greater business value from key enterprise applications. Delivering enhanced visibility into the end-user experience, the NetSensory Solution Insight for F5 WANJet is a point-and-click interface for NetSensory appliances that enables resellers, integrators, and network managers to easily identify where WANJet appliances are needed and vividly demonstrate improvements in application performance.

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The Solution Insight for F5 WANJet seamlessly integrates WANJet link, utilization, and status information with the more than 50 performance and utilization metrics delivered by a Network Physics NetSensory appliance. The result is a set of actionable reports and dashboards that give managers deep, real-time and historical insight into the operation and benefits of the WANJet implementation. In general, only one NetSensory appliance, which installs quickly via SPAN/mirror port or tap, is needed to manage multiple WANJet implementations. Channel partners can use the Solution Insight for F5 WANJet prior to the WANJet installation to demonstrate the expected benefits of WANJet's acceleration and optimization capabilities.

"The detailed view of application performance and utilization offered by the new Solution Insight really lets us zero in on the benefits offered by F5's WANJet product line," said Jef Allen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Intelligent Technology Systems. "We can vividly demonstrate what we're delivering as an F5 reseller, and find additional opportunities where WANJet can make a difference to our customers."

"Organizations today are focused on maximizing application performance over the network to increase productivity and reduce the cost of doing business," said Jim Ritchings VP of Business Development at F5 Networks. "F5 has established solid leadership in the overall market for application delivery networking and we're excited to team with Network Physics to provide our customers with a single-box management solution that helps them get the most from their WANJet investment, ensuring the performance and availability of their key enterprise applications."

"We're pleased to be partnering with the market leader in application delivery networking to help enterprises realize the maximum value from their business applications," said Kenny Frerichs, President and CEO of Network Physics. "This partnership presents unique opportunities for both Network Physics and our channel partners, to further establish ourselves as the application performance management solution of choice for mid-size and large enterprises. And it underscores our commitment to develop a Solution Insight ecosystem that will enable our customers to get the most out of all their application investments."

Availability and Pricing

The integrated solution is available immediately from Network Physics' authorized reseller partners. Pricing is available from Network Physics channel partners.

About F5

F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking. F5 provides solutions that make applications secure, fast and available for everyone, helping organizations get the most out of their investment. By adding intelligence and manageability into the network to offload applications, F5 optimizes applications and allows them to work faster and consume fewer resources. F5's extensible architecture intelligently integrates application optimization, protects the application and the network, and delivers application reliability - all on one universal platform. Over 10,000 organizations and service providers worldwide trust F5 to keep their applications running. The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington with offices worldwide. For more information, go to www.f5.com.

About Network Physics

Network Physics NetSensory application performance management appliances deliver an unmatched combination of real-time performance management, application discovery, and business reporting. Starting at $9995, their rapid installation, minimal configuration, and ease of use make them ideal for mid-size enterprises, while their proven ability to monitor end-to-end performance across the largest and most complex networks allows even global enterprises to audit, baseline, troubleshoot, secure, and optimize the performance of all their applications. By presenting user experience -- the common language of both network and application managers -- in terms of its network and server components and their business impact, NetSensory appliances help improve application performance across the network, increase IT productivity and cooperation, and aid technical managers in communicating IT issues and benefits to the CIO and non-technical managers. Sold only through the channel, Network Physics products are currently deployed at hundreds of mid-size and Global 2000 organizations, including world leaders in the financial, health care, manufacturing, media, retail sectors, and more. For more information, please visit the company's web site at www.networkphysics.com.

CUPERTINO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Borland Software Corporation (NASDAQ:BORL, www.borland.com), the global leader for Software Delivery Optimization (SDO), today unveiled the Borland Lifecycle Quality Management (LQM) solution. A new offering designed to enable customers to deliver every application with confidence, Borland's LQM solution ensures quality is built into software at the very point of project definition, tested earlier and more often, and traced throughout every phase of the software delivery lifecycle.

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The Borland LQM solution offers the first integrated ALM product suite that links business requirements to code to testing priorities and activities in an automated and traceable way. This connection helps break down barriers between business, development and QA teams so IT organizations can have more confidence that the software they deliver meets business requirements, is on-time, and offers correct code with minimal defects. In addition to ALM technology, the Borland solution includes a proven set of process best practices, assessments and skills training to institutionalize a more proactive and preventative approach to software quality than what many organizations have today.

"The consequences of poor software quality are well known, yet quality is still often treated as an afterthought - something addressed late in the lifecycle with only one organization (QA) truly held accountable," said Erik Frieberg, vice president of product marketing and strategy at Borland Software. "Borland is making it easier for organizations to ensure quality is a shared responsibility across teams and throughout the lifecycle. This is a significant step in our vision for Software Delivery Optimization, and it is what our LQM solution is built to achieve."

A Proactive Solution to Improve Quality

LQM is one of the four holistic solutions that Borland offers to make software delivery a more manageable, efficient and predictable business process. The Borland LQM solution offers a solid foundation of ALM technologies to "quality-enable" all members of the software delivery team, including business analysts, architects, developers, testers and management. It includes the following components:

-- Gauntlet(TM): A better way to prevent -- not react to -- software defects

Gauntlet is a unique new developer test and defect prevention system that builds quality checks into existing development tasks. Gauntlet works with existing software configuration management (SCM) and version control systems to measure and analyze code as it's checked in, isolating problem code before it affects others. In addition to reducing broken builds and costly rework, Gauntlet promotes a continuous build and testing environment so all teams have greater visibility into application health earlier in the lifecycle. Gauntlet is also designed to support third-party plug-ins to test for a broad range of potential defects such as security vulnerabilities, license compliance violations, code complexity and readability.

-- An enterprise-class platform for software quality management

Borland SilkCentral(R) Test Manager(TM) serves as the management foundation for all pre-deployment quality activities. It is a single, powerful and open web-based test management system that supports all stages of the software quality lifecycle from planning, test management, execution and reporting of automated and manual testing activities. SilkCentral Test Manager integrates tightly with Borland SilkTest(R) for automated functional and regression testing and Borland SilkPerformer(R) for load and performance testing. It is also designed to interface easily with other open-source or commercial testing tools on the market, such as those from Mercury, to ensure customers can leverage their existing assets and investments while still pursuing a more preventative approach to quality.

-- Integrated ALM products for requirements-based testing, version control and enterprise defect management

New integrations between Borland SilkCentral Test Manager and Borland's CaliberRM(TM) and Caliber DefineIT(TM) products help organizations automate the alignment of their requirements and testing processes. This enables teams to build quality metrics into requirements from the very beginning, to generate test cases directly from requirements, determine the impact of changes, and align teams to test what matters. Additionally, new integrations across the Silk(TM) products with Borland StarTeam(R) provide test asset version control and a proven, enterprise-ready defect and change management system.

-- Process expertise and training to ensure customer success

Technology alone cannot change the reactive, waterfall approach to quality that exists today. Therefore, the Borland LQM solution packages process consulting and educational services to refine and institutionalize a process that can help companies effectively plan, verify, validate, manage and improve software quality.

An Emerging Approach to an Age-Old Problem

"Many application development organizations overemphasize late-stage testing and tools," said Jim Duggan of Gartner in a research report targeted to CIOs(1). "Since the earliest research into software quality, it has been apparent that a balanced approach that exploits people, processes and tools at several stages throughout the life cycle can achieve improved quality and predictability at the lowest overall cost."

The ability to integrate existing software delivery processes in a more automated and efficient manner can not only help improve quality, but can also increase team productivity, lower development costs, and improve time-to-market. A recent Borland survey of almost 800 IT professionals indicates that companies are already seeking out these integrations(2). Over 40 percent of those survey respondents said they are in the midst of, or planning to, integrate their requirements and QA processes within the next year

Borland's LQM solution specifically helps to align and support the following processes:

-- Requirements definition and management

-- Test management and execution

-- Architecture and design analysis

-- Development test and defect prevention

-- Automated functional testing

-- Performance and scalability testing

-- Defect tracking and version control

"Quality is at the heart of our business," said Logesh Dorairaj, lead infrastructure architect for software quality engineering (SQE) at Varian Medical Systems, a leading manufacturer of medical technology for treating cancer. "Both the industry we're in and the strict compliance regulations we must deal with, such as SOX and HIPPA, require us to aim at delivering zero-defect products with high traceability. The ability to link requirements from inception through testing gives us a high level of confidence that we're delivering a quality product that's built to specifications. To do this in the past, we had to manually connect our engineering and testing processes, and the different systems used by those teams. Having a fully-integrated solution to automate this makes our processes much more efficient."

"Millions of customers rely on EarthLink's software and services daily, and Borland helps us deliver the optimal Internet experience to each and every subscriber," said Barbara Tam, senior quality engineer at EarthLink. "Working with a company like Borland helps ensure that when we upgrade or launch new and innovative products, that we are delivering a best-in-class solution each and every time."

Availability

The Borland LQM solution is available now, with the exception of Gauntlet. An early access release of Gauntlet is currently available for public download and evaluation, and the product will be generally available later this year. To download this early access release, please visit: http://www.borland.com/downloads/download_gauntlet.html.

For more information on Borland's LQM solution, please visit www.borland.com/us/solutions/lifecycle_quality_management/index.html.

About Borland

Founded in 1983, Borland (NASDQAQ:BORL) is a global leader in application lifecycle management (ALM), providing solutions that make software delivery a more manageable, efficient and predictable business process. Borland provides the software, services and training that enable companies to achieve Software Delivery Optimization and maximize the business value of software. To learn more about delivering quality software, on time and within budget, visit http://www.borland.com.

Borland, Gauntlet, SilkCentral, Test Manager, SilkTest, SilkPerformer, CaliberRM, DefineIT, Silk, StarTeam and all other Borland brand and product names are service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of Borland Software Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains "forward-looking statements" as defined under the U.S. Federal Securities Laws, including the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is subject to the safe harbors created by such laws. Forward-looking statements may relate to, but are not limited to, the features available in, and the potential benefits to be derived from, Borland products and solutions, and the release dates, plans and market acceptance of such products and solutions, including the Borland Lifecycle Quality Management solution. Such forward-looking statements are based on current expectations that involve a number of uncertainties and risks that may cause actual events or results to differ materially. Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially include, among others, the following: rapid technological change that can adversely affect the demand for Borland products, shifts in customer demand, shifts in strategic relationships, delays in Borland's ability to deliver its products and services, software errors or announcements by competitors. These and other risks may be detailed from time to time in Borland periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, its latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and its latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, copies of which may be obtained from www.sec.gov. Borland is under no obligation to (and expressly disclaims any such obligation to) update or alter its forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Information contained in our website is not incorporated by reference in, or made part of this press release.

(1) Gartner, "CIO Update: Develop your applications fast, but develop them well," November 9, 2005

(2) Borland Software, "IT Professionals Survey on Software Requirements," July 2006 (Nearly 800 respondents from the U.S., U.K., and Germany)

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- The SOA Forum, an exclusive roundtable of senior IT executives and enterprise architects from Fortune 500 companies and Government agencies, today announced that is has reached a significant milestone with over 1,000 members to date.

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The SOA Forum is a roundtable of executives who are mandated with the challenging mission of driving a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) within their organizations. The SOA Forum is celebrating over three years of successful and interactive collaboration between its members. Today the forum includes over 1,000 members representing more than 350 organizations.

The next SOA Forum roundtable will feature Darren Wesemann, Chief Technology Officer for SunGard's Financial Systems businesses and is chief architect of the Common Services Architecture (CSA), who will present "Achieving a Common Services Architecture" on Thursday, October 5 at 2:00 PM EDT. The discussion will cover SunGard's 5-year SOA effort (dubbed the Common Services Architecture, or CSA), which is both a technical architecture as well as a collaborative process including a governance model. Learn how the CSA has transformed the way SunGard works and the SOA lessons they have learn along the way.

"To appreciate how challenging our SOA initiative is, remember that SunGard is a company that has grown by more than 135 acquisitions to date. Our developers have had the choice of at least seven operating systems, eight programming languages, eight database management systems, six Web servers, and four code repositories. The goal of CSA is to synchronize those software assets, achieving economies of scale, leveraging and sharing the intellectual property of our diverse business units, while nurturing agility and focus," said Darren Wesemann, Chief Technology Officer for SunGard's Financial Systems.

"WebLayers is excited to have Darren Wesemann of SunGard present at the next SOA Forum," said Gregg Bjork, CEO of WebLayers. "We are also very proud of the contributions the SOA Forum has made in helping to move the SOA market forward. When WebLayers initiated the SOA Forum over 3 years ago, we saw tremendous enthusiasm about the promise of SOA, but very limited results as the market was just in its infancy. Providing a venue where senior executives could share and learn from their peers has propelled many of our member companies to success in their SOA initiates."

SOA Forum members and non-members can register for this event at http://www.weblayers.com/theSOAforum/.

About The SOA Forum

WebLayers is the founder and coordinator of The SOA Forum. The SOA Forum is comprised of senior IT executives and enterprise architects from Fortune 500 companies and government agencies. Current members include over 1,000 senior IT executives and enterprise architects.

http://www.weblayers.com/theSOAforum/

About WebLayers

WebLayers (www.weblayers.com) is leading the market for Policy Infrastructure for SOA Governance. A private company founded in 2002 with venture capital backing, WebLayers is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

WebLayers Center(TM), the company's flagship product, allows organizations to define, enforce and audit policies across the enterprise. WebLayers Center is deployed in many of the largest commercial and government organizations who use it to define their enterprise policies, detect, analyze, and ensure conformance and to govern their SOA implementation.

Copyright 2006 WebLayers, Inc. All rights reserved. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. WebLayers Center, WebLayers Center for SOA, WebLayers Center for Outsourcing and WebLayers Center for Enterprise Services Integration are trademarks of WebLayers, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

--(Business Wire)-- Hyperion Solutions Corporation (Nasdaq Global Select:HYSL):

WHO:   Erik Thomsen, distinguished scientist, and Philippe Adam,
    vice president of EMEA marketing at Hyperion, (Nasdaq
    Global Select:HYSL), the global leader in Business
    Performance Management software, will participate at the
    Global Reporting Initiative's (GRI) Conference on
    Sustainability and Reporting.
WHEN:  The Global Reporting Initiative's Conference on
    Sustainability and Reporting takes place from October 4-6,
    2006.
    Mr. Thomsen's presentation will take place on Thursday,
    October 5, from 2:00 - 2:45 PM. Mr. Adam's "Beyond the
    Launch" leadership track will take place on Friday,
    October 6, from 9:00 - 10:30 AM.
WHAT:  The Global Reporting Initiative's Conference on
    Sustainability and Reporting. The theme of this year's
    conference is Reporting: a Measure of Sustainability. More
    than 100 speakers representing business, civil society,
    labor and government from developed and developing
    countries will join executives from around the world -
    including board members, CEOs, COOs and CFOs - who are
    leaders in sustainability reporting. The Global Reporting
    Initiative (GRI) is a global voluntary network dedicated
    to the development and use of a sustainability reporting
    framework.
    During this year's conference, the GRI will launch the new
    G3 reporting Guidelines. The new G3 Guidelines make
    reporting simpler, are better harmonized with the UN
    Global Compact and other tools, and make GRI reports more
    useful for investors and analysts, focusing on corporate
    governance.
TOPICS: Hyperion's Philippe Adam will be participating in "Beyond
    the Launch" leadership track, where he will address the
    impact of the G3 standards on industry and discuss best
    practices in implementing these new standards.
    During this year's Technology Fair, Hyperion's Erik
    Thomsen will present, "Linking Sustainability Reporting
    and Financial Reporting." Many companies treat
    sustainability reporting as a separate process from their
    Financial Reporting. Some companies, however, are
    realizing the benefits of integrating these two processes.
    Mr. Thomsen will discuss the advantages of sustainability
    reporting, the benefits of integrating sustainability
    reporting with financial reporting and how companies can
    collect and distribute this information throughout the
    enterprise and beyond. Mr. Thomsen will address how
    forward-thinking companies are leveraging business
    performance management software to drive performance
    improvements by better aligning goals with metrics and
    increasing operational efficiency, while managing and
    reporting a responsible environmental policy.
WHERE:  Hotel Okura Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    For more information or to register go to www.grig3.org/.

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About Hyperion

Hyperion Solutions Corporation (Nasdaq Global Select:HYSL) is the global leader in Business Performance Management software. More than 12,000 customers in 90 countries rely on Hyperion both for insight into current business performance and to drive performance improvement. With Hyperion software, businesses collect, analyze and share data across the organization, linking strategies to plans and monitoring execution against goals. Hyperion integrates financial management applications with a business intelligence platform into a single management system for the global enterprise. For more information, visit www.hyperion.com.

"Hyperion," and Hyperion's product names are trademarks of Hyperion. References to other companies and their products use trademarks owned by the respective companies and are for reference purpose only.

OMAHA, Neb. --(Business Wire)-- Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. (Nasdaq:TSAI) ("TSA" or the "Company") today announced that it has closed on its acquisition of P&H Solutions, a leading provider of enterprise business banking solutions. In addition, the Company is providing an update on progress toward its business strategy and financial guidance.

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P&H Solutions Acquisition

The Company has closed the P&H Solutions acquisition and will now begin the integration process. In addition, the Company has closed on its $150 million credit facility led by Wachovia Securities. "We are pleased to have completed the acquisition on schedule," said Philip G. Heasley, TSA CEO. "Our managers will now engage in the detailed integration process to ensure that we create the appropriate synergies and get our teams working together as quickly as possible. Since the acquisition was announced last month, we've received positive feedback from both customers and industry analysts and are excited to move ahead with the integration of our businesses."

TSA paid $150 million for P&H Solutions, net of cash acquired. The acquisition was funded by $75 million of available TSA cash and $75 million from the revolving credit facility.

Plan to Rebrand Under ACI Worldwide Name

The Company is announcing today that it plans to rebrand the corporation fully under the ACI Worldwide name. ACI Worldwide is the primary operating company and brand used in the marketplace, and this name change is a key element of the Company's strategic plan developed in 2005. ACI Worldwide will have three primary operating functions:

-- ACI Global Solutions - The Company's global organization for solutions research and development, operating as its "product factory." This will also include the Company's low-cost development operations around the world with a focus on developing locally applicable payment solutions as part of a total product strategy. Key centers of excellence for ACI Global Solutions will be Omaha, Boston and Timisoara, Romania.

-- ACI Distribution Channels - The Company's structure for distributing its solutions to the global marketplace. ACI's three channels are the Americas, headquartered in New York; Europe, Middle East and Africa, headquartered in Watford, England; and Asia/Pacific, headquartered in Singapore.

-- Software as a Service - The Company's strategy for offering its solutions on a services basis, including "task-based" services such as project management, solution customization and ongoing systems support, as well as "environment-based" offerings, wherein customers may use the Company's solutions on a services basis. The P&H acquisition forms the basis for this new "environment-based" offering.

The planned rebranding of the corporation as ACI Worldwide is expected to be completed in the spring of 2007.

New Organization Appointments

As part of its strategy to organize for globalization, the Company is announcing the following changes to its senior management structure:

-- Mark Vipond is being appointed as Chief Operating Officer. Vipond has been with the Company for over 21 years in a variety of roles, most recently as President of the ACI Worldwide Product Division. In his new role, Vipond will have continuing responsibility for the Company's global product and services initiatives, and he will participate in the day-to-day operations of the Office of the President.

-- The Company will appoint Jeremy Wilmot as President of the Asia/Pacific channel. Wilmot has been with the Company for seven years, most recently as the leader of ACI's sales and support operation in Western Europe. He has extensive background in sales and support of ACI's customers in a number of geographic regions, including Western Europe, the United Kingdom and the African continent. He will relocate to Singapore in his new role. Don McLarty, President of the Asia/Pacific operation, is scheduled to retire at the end of the second fiscal quarter, after a transition period to Wilmot which will begin in the first fiscal quarter of 2007.

-- Ralph Dangelmaier, former CEO of P&H Solutions, has been appointed President of the global Software as a Service business. Dangelmaier will leverage his expertise in the development of P&H's successful ASP offering to develop ACI's overall global strategy for offering its entire solutions suite on a services basis.

"We're excited about the expertise, energy and commitment that Mark, Jeremy and Ralph bring to our senior management structure," said Heasley. "We believe that we are now positioned appropriately from a structural perspective for heightened success in the market. I want to personally thank Don McLarty for his work in getting our Asia Pacific region moving forward, and wish him well in his new endeavors.

"We believe the rebranding of the Company and our new organization structure will give us the agility necessary to offer and support mission-critical solutions on a global basis with optimal cost and service efficiency," said Heasley. "The end result of this rebranding and restructuring will be a leading converged electronic payments solutions suite, delivered on a global basis under a single brand."

BASE24-es Moves to Category A Classification

As a result of the continued success and maturation of the Company's next-generation BASE24-es product, the product has now been reclassified as a Category A product ("mature product"). As a Category A product, the Company will now have the ability, under certain circumstances, to recognize revenue at the time of product shipment rather than upon customer acceptance. Actual revenue recognition with respect to any transaction could still be delayed based on several factors, including customer-specific acceptance language, other bundled non-mature products, payment terms or other bundled products or services which have not yet been delivered. This reclassification will be effective for BASE24-es contracts signed after October 1, 2006.

In addition to this classification change, the product will be renamed BASE24-eps (electronic payment system). BASE24-eps will represent the strategic platform upon which all new product development will be based and will form the core for convergence of other ACI payments products.

"This reclassification of BASE24-es and its subsequent renaming represent key steps in the validation of the product by the marketplace," said Heasley. "Our recent success with customer projects, our continued sales success with new accounts and validation of our solution by key partners like IBM give us confidence that we will now begin to see the benefits of this strategic investment."

Product Convergence

In addition to creation of the BASE24-eps brand, the Company will also begin to move its other core payments products under the BASE24 brand. ACI's Wholesale Payments System, as part of the Company's payments convergence strategy, will be renamed BASE24-wps. Other strategic products that fit into the payments engine supply chain will fall under the BASE24 brand over time. The result will be a converged payments platform under the BASE24 brand, with an ongoing strategy to add new payments capabilities in areas such as bulk file payments and electronic data interchange.

In addition, the Company will continue to offer its "classic" product lines to customers where they have tactical needs based on timeframes or platform preference. Classic product lines will include BASE24, Open/2, ON/2, AS/X and the ACI Retail Commerce Server, as well as others. The Company plans to work with customers supported on classic products to migrate to the new BASE24-branded solutions over time. In addition, the Company will continue to offer infrastructure tools that support the connectivity, data management, operations management and testing requirements of mission-critical electronic payment systems for banks, retailers and processors.

"The outcome of this product strategy will be a consolidated, BASE24-branded electronic payments platform designed to meet the end-to-end requirements of large payments players for both retail and wholesale payment needs," said Heasley.

Progress with Acquisitions

Over the past 18 months, the Company has completed three acquisitions: S2 Systems, eps Electronic Payment Systems AG (eps) and P&H Solutions. S2 has now been fully integrated into ACI's global operations. eps has become the center for ACI's Germanic distribution and delivery capability and a key component of the global business strategy in terms of product distribution, low-cost development and support centers, and senior management depth. As noted above, P&H integration activities will begin now that the acquisition has been closed.

Fiscal End-of-Year Activities

The Company continues to execute on its business strategy, with several activities coming to a conclusion during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2006:

-- The Company appointed Henry Lyons as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and appointed Craig Maki as Senior Vice President and Chief Corporate Development Officer.

-- The Company established its corporate offices in New York City.

-- The Company restructured its product and services organization to create ACI Global Solutions.

-- The Company continues to consolidate its physical infrastructure and has consolidated its Frankfurt and Weisbaden offices in Germany.

-- The Company completed the divestiture of its e-Courier and Workpoint technologies, retaining rights to distribute these products as components of its electronic payments solutions. The products will now be owned by Planet Group Inc., a software and consulting company headquartered in Omaha, Neb.

Fiscal fourth-quarter results will be impacted in part by costs associated with the activities listed above and by increased selling costs associated with above-plan sales activity. During the quarter, the Company licensed BASE24-es to a top-25 U.S. bank and a top-five Spanish retailer, signed three top-25 U.S. banks for its Proactive Risk Manager fraud detection solution, signed two large banks for its Wholesale Payment System and signed a large Canadian bank for its Smart Chip Manager product.

"Fiscal 2006 clearly represented a transitional year for the Company," said Heasley. "We continue working to optimize the business to increase our global reach, we are making good progress in integrating our strategic acquisitions, and we continue to invest to create the leading end-to-end electronic payments solution in the market. We believe our investment in infrastructure and solutions put us in a strong position to take advantage of the opportunities ahead of us."

Updated Financial Guidance

Based on the closing of the P&H acquisition and the product divestitures noted above, conclusion of the budgeting process for fiscal 2007 and finalization of the new global organization structure, the Company is now updating its guidance for fiscal 2006 and establishing fiscal 2007 guidance for revenue and earnings per share. Final results for fiscal 2006 are subject to, and will be provided after, completion of the Company's quarter- and year-end closing process in late October.

Notwithstanding the above-plan sales performance in the fourth quarter, the Company presently expects results to be at the low end of its revenue and earnings per share guidance range for fiscal 2006, before the impact of the special items noted above.

For fiscal 2007, the Company expects revenue as follows:

                  Revenue
                  -------
TSA revenue before P&H       $391 million to $401 million
Adjusted revenue from
P&H Solutions(a)          $40 million to $42 million
                  --------------------------
Total revenue            $431 million to $443 million
  (a) revenue after the impact of deferred revenue adjustment

For fiscal 2007, the Company expects fully diluted earnings per share as follows:

                   Diluted earnings per share
                   --------------------------
Earnings per share before
P&H dilution             $1.65 to $1.78
Dilutive effect of P&H Solutions(b) ($.16) to ($.14)
                   --------------
GAAP earnings per share after P&H   $1.49 to $1.64
    (b) dilution due to effect of purchase accounting
         and other non-cash items

The Company's guidance for fiscal 2007 assumes an average income tax rate of 34 percent and an average of 38.4 million fully diluted shares.

"Our expectations for fiscal 2007 fit well with the long-term goals we have established for the Company," added Heasley. "Revenue from operations before the P&H acquisition is expected to increase approximately 13 percent year over year, while total revenue is expected to increase approximately 25 percent. Earnings per share are expected to increase approximately 30 percent over fiscal 2006 on a comparable basis and approximately 20 percent after factoring in the expected dilutive impact of the P&H acquisition, and including the increased investment in our Irish, Romanian and Software as a Service infrastructure. The reclassification of our flagship product, BASE24-es, to Category A status should improve our ability to forecast revenue from new contracts, and improve the linkage between revenue and selling expense.

"We believe that P&H, with a core growth rate in excess of 20 percent, is a key element in our overall growth strategy. It solidifies our Software as a Service management organization and provides the initial platform for us to offer more of our products to customers on a services basis. Given some investment in P&H's solutions to meet international requirements, we expect to leverage ACI's global distribution channel to offer the P&H solutions to customers outside the U.S. Finally, this acquisition makes our overall wholesale payments offering more complete, and sets the stage for us to have more success in this important category."

As part of its continued investment in infrastructure and globalization, the Company expects to spend $5.4 million during fiscal 2007 in developing its Irish and Romanian operations, as well as developing its global Software as a Service offering; this investment is included in the guidance noted above. Investment in the Irish operation, where international intellectual property rights for BASE24-es are now housed, is expected to improve the Company's overall tax efficiency beginning in fiscal 2009. As the Company increases its resource levels in Romania, it expects to gain significant efficiencies in its product development and services initiatives over time. The Company will use the P&H platform to begin to offer its other products on a services basis globally.

"We're excited about the prospects for TSA in fiscal 2007 and beyond," added Heasley. "We continue to make strides in the globalization of the Company, and we see solid opportunities for our enterprise electronic payment solutions. Industry dynamics, including the continued growth in electronic payment volumes, the need for increased payments productivity, and ongoing concerns about compliance and payments fraud should continue to create demand for our solutions. And, as we've noted, the advancement of our Software as a Service strategy will give our customers additional options for how they leverage our solutions."

TSA will hold a conference call at 11 a.m. EDT on Monday, October 2, 2006, to discuss the P&H deal closing, the Company's strategy update and its updated financial guidance. Interested persons may access a real-time audio broadcast of the teleconference at www.tsainc.com/investors.

About Transaction Systems Architects, Inc.

The Company's software facilitates electronic payments by providing consumers and companies access to their money. Its products are used to process transactions involving credit cards, debit cards, secure electronic commerce, mobile commerce, smart cards, secure electronic document delivery and payment, checks, high-value money transfers, bulk payment clearing and settlement, and enterprise e-infrastructure. The Company's solutions are used by approximately 900 customers in 83 countries on six continents. Visit Transaction Systems Architects, Inc. on the Internet at www.tsainc.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Generally, forward-looking statements do not relate strictly to historical or current facts and may include words or phrases such as the Company "believes," "will", "expects," "looks forward to," and words and phrases of similar impact, and include but are not limited to statements regarding future operations, business strategy and business environment and specifically include amounts estimated in the 12-month and 60-month backlogs, the Company's revenue and earnings guidance, and the Company's long-term revenue and earnings growth objectives.

The forward-looking statements are made pursuant to safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the:

-- Company's revenues and EPS estimates for fiscal 2006 and fiscal 2007 and expectations about fourth quarter special and sales expenses

-- Company's expectation regarding P&H's 2007 revenue and earnings per diluted share results and core growth rate in excess of 20 percent

-- Company's belief that P&H solidifies the Company's Software as a Service organization and provides the initial platform for the Company to offer more of its products to customers on a services basis

-- Company's belief that the acquisition of P&H complements the Company's growth strategy by expanding its wholesale payments offering and sets the stage for the Company to have more success in this category

-- Company's belief that it will begin to see benefits from strategic investment in BASE24-es

-- Company's belief that it is now positioned appropriately from a structural perspective for heightened success in the market

-- Company's belief that its rebranding and new organization structure will give it the agility necessary to offer and support mission-critical solutions on a global basis with optimal cost and service efficiency

-- Company's belief that its investment in infrastructure and solutions puts it in a strong position to take advantage of opportunities and that there are solid opportunities for its solutions

-- Company's belief that its product strategy will meet the end-to-end requirements of large payments players

-- Company's belief that the acquisition of eps Electronic Payment Systems AG gives it an excellent platform to satisfy the region's need for payment solutions

-- Company's belief that the reclassification of BASE24-es to Category A status should improve the Company's ability to forecast revenue

-- Company's belief that establishing a new subsidiary in Ireland and the remote software development operations in Romania and elsewhere will improve the Company's overall tax efficiency beginning in fiscal 2009 and provide the Company with low-cost centers of expertise, and ensure that the Company remains price-competitive in supporting a growing international customer base

-- Company's belief that there are increasing opportunities for its enterprise electronic payment solutions based on industry dynamics, including the continued growth in electronic payment volumes, the need for increased payments productivity, and ongoing concern about compliance and payments fraud should continue to created expanded demand for its highly differentiated solutions

Any or all of the forward-looking statements may turn out to be wrong. They can be affected by the judgments and estimates underlying such assumptions or by known or unknown risks and uncertainties. Many of these factors will be important in determining the Company's actual future results. Consequently, no forward-looking statement can be guaranteed. Actual future results may vary materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements. In addition, the Company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

The Company operates in a rapidly changing technological and economic environment that presents other risks. Many of these risks are beyond the Company's control and are driven by factors that often cannot be predicted. Furthermore, no assurance can be given that the Company will be successful in integrating and operating P&H. The failure to successfully integrate and operate P&H could cause the actual financial results derived from the acquisition to differ materially from the expected financial results and may also have a material adverse effect on the Company's business, financial condition and results of operations.

All of the foregoing forward-looking statements are expressly qualified by the risk factors discussed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For a detailed discussion of these risk factors, parties that are relying on the forward-looking statements should review the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's Form 10-K filed on December 14, 2005, the Company's Form 10-Q filed on February 9, 2006, the Company's Form 10-Q filed on May 10, 2006, the Company's Form 10-Q filed on August 9, 2006 and specifically the section entitled "Factors That May Affect the Company's Future Results or the Market Price of the Company's Common Stock."

The risks identified in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission include, but are not limited to:

-- Risks inherent in making an estimate of the Company's 12-month and 60-month backlog which involve substantial judgment and estimates

-- Risks associated with tax positions taken by the Company which require substantial judgment and with which taxing authorities may not agree

-- Risks associated with the class action lawsuit against the Company and certain former officers and directors of the Company relating to its restatement of prior consolidated financial results, including the adequacy of insurance coverage and the possibility of additional litigation

-- Risks associated with litigation in the software industry regarding intellectual property rights

-- Risks associated with the Company's ability to protect its proprietary rights

-- Risks associated with the Company's concentration of business in the financial services industry

-- Risks associated with fluctuations in quarterly operating results and resulting stock price volatility

-- Risks associated with conducting international operations

-- Risks regarding the Company's new BASE24-eps product

-- Risks associated with the Company's dependence on its BASE24 solution

-- Risks associated with the Company's dependence on the licensing of software products that operate on Hewlett-Packard NonStop servers

-- Risks associated with the complexity of the Company's software products

-- Risks associated with the Company's acquisition of new products and services or enhancement of existing products and services through acquisitions of other companies, product lines, technologies and personnel, or through investments in other companies

-- Risks associated with the integration of its P&H operations and customers, including, without limitation, the risks described in the Company's Form 8-K filed September 1, 2006

-- Risks associated with new accounting standards, or revised interpretations or guidance regarding existing standards

-- Risks associated with the assessment and maintenance of internal controls over the Company's financial reporting

Customer Feedback Center, from Customer Feedback Solutions, Inc is now available on Salesforce.com’s AppExchange.

 

The Customer Feedback Center (CFC) provides a centralized suite of Web-based Customer Interaction Management tools for companies. The Center enables the companies to manage and measure their customers’ Website interactions and communications, which creates real-time sales opportunities in Salesforce.

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CFC’s affordable and easy to use on-demand Customer Interaction Management system enables companies to centrally manage and measure all customer interactions on their Website, including feedback provided, trouble tickets submitted, documents downloaded, knowledge base searches performed and several other tasks.

 

This critical customer information is then provided by the Feedback Center in real-time to marketing, sales, support, and management teams. This increases lead generation, reduces costs and increases revenues.

 

Offered as a Web-based subscription service, CFC doesn’t require additional software, installation, maintenance, or any support from an in-house IT department to implement or operate.

 

“Every business wants to generate additional sales leads and revenues in order to positively impact their company’s growth,” said CEO and co-founder of Customer Feedback Solutions, Inc., Adam Zeitsiff in a press release.

 

He continued:  “The CFC has helped the sales, product and executive management teams from some of the world’s largest industry-leading companies make informed decisions in real-time, resulting in increased revenues and a positive effect on their bottom-line.”

 

Salesforce.com (News - Alert) made news last week when Option One Mortgage Corporation, a national residential mortgage lender deployed Salesforce SFA for its 750 users.

 

Using the AppExchange on-demand platform, Option One integrated Salesforce with its broker database system and wireless access. The integration provided the mortgage lender greater insight and access to customer information for its enterprise and field users.

 

For more information, visit Salesforce.com or Customer Feedback Solutions, Inc.

 

-----

 

Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill., Oct. 2 -- Motorola, Inc. , a leading provider of broadband wireless technologies and devices, today announced it is participating in four wireless broadband tradeshows in October. At these events Motorola will demonstrate to audiences worldwide the benefits of MOTOwi4(TM), its portfolio of wireless broadband solutions, as cost-effective means for delivering wireless connectivity for fixed, portable, and mobile applications.

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Senior executives from Motorola's Asian, European and U.S. entities will discuss and demonstrate how WiMAX technology will maximize the potential of wireless applications, deliver seamless connectivity and provide faster connections.

Motorola's participation in and sponsorship of these events builds upon the momentum it has achieved in WiMAX and wireless broadband in recent months. Notably:

* Sprint Nextel's selection of Motorola as a vendor to build its
nationwide WiMAX network
* Motorola's investment in Clearwire, a high speed wireless broadband
Internet services provider, to accelerate the development and deployment
of WiMAX networks
* Wateen's current deployment of a Motorola WiMAX network across Pakistan
* Motorola's announced strategic initiative to develop mobile WiMAX
chipsets for use in Motorola's next-generation WiMAX devices

Conference: Wireless Broadband Week
Where: Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, Singapore
When: Oct. 3-4, 2006

On Oct. 3, Ray Owen, director, Wireless Broadband - Asia Pacific, Networks & Enterprise, Motorola, will chair Day One of the conference and deliver the opening speech, followed by a keynote from Benhur Mesfin, director, Wireless Broadband - Asia Pacific on "WiMAX, Unlicensed or 3G? Which Makes Most Sense For Your Business in Asia?". The keynote will address wireless broadband in Asia, strengths of technologies applied to the Asian market and strategy recommendations for optimum market success.

Conference: Broadband World Broadband/WiMAX Global ComForum
Where: CNIT La Defense, Paris, France
When: Oct. 9-12, 2006

At the Broadband World Forum, Paul Budgen, director of sales, Motorola Wireless Broadband Products, EMEA, will chair a session "Macedonia Connects: A Template for Nation-Wide Wireless Broadband Networks in Developing Nations" with speakers from the Macedonia Connects Project. Macedonia Connects Project is the first program in the world that provides it citizens with affordable, high-speed access to the Internet on a national scale. Motorola's wi4 Canopy(R) wireless broadband technology was chosen for this wireless broadband network and deployed nationwide in under three months.

At the co-located WiMAX Global ComForum, Laith Sadiq, director of strategy, Motorola Infrastructure, EMEA will participate in a panel discussing "WiMAX: Enabling Open Services Delivery Platform."

Conference: WiMAX World USA
Where: World Trade Center, Boston, MA
When: Oct. 10-12, 2006

Greg Brown, president, Motorola Networks & Enterprise, will deliver a keynote on "The State of Wireless Broadband and its Future" on Oct. 11. Motorola will also host the Oct. 12 Power Breakfast featuring Dan Coombes, Networks & Enterprise chief technology officer, discussing "Fitting WiMAX Into the Broadband Access Mix." There are six additional Motorola presentations throughout the two-day event including sessions on: Investing in WiMAX, an Executive Perspective; Role of WiMAX in Municipal System Architectures; and Comparing Cost/Performance Benefits in WiMAX & 3G.

Global WiMAX Summit in China 2006
Where: The Presidential Plaza, Beijing
When: Oct. 23-24, 2006

On Oct. 23 Adolfo Masini, vice president for business development in the Wireless Broadband Group of Motorola Networks & Enterprise, will deliver a keynote on "Enabling Seamless Mobility through Wireless Broadband." Other speakers during the conference include Randy Cox, presenting a "WiMAX Deployment Case Study," Fang Yuan discussing "Wireless Broadband Driving Convergence," and Wu Kai covering "WiMAX Network Planning, Deployment and Optimization Service."

Additional information on these tradeshows is available on the Motorola website: http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/calendar.jsp

For more information about Motorola's WiMAX Week copy and paste the following link into your browser: http://business.motorola.com/wimax/wimaxweek.html?WT.ac=global%252520ho me%252520cpleft%252520wimaxweek

About Motorola
Motorola is known around the world for innovation and leadership in wireless and broadband communications. Inspired by our vision of Seamless Mobility, the people of Motorola are committed to helping you get and stay connected simply and seamlessly to the people, information, and entertainment that you want and need. We do this by designing and delivering "must have" products, "must do" experiences and powerful networks -- along with a full complement of support services. A Fortune 100 company with global presence and impact, Motorola had sales of US $35.3 billion in 2005. For more information about our company, our people and our innovations, please visit http://www.motorola.com/

MOTOROLA and the Stylized M Logo are registered in the US Patent & Trademark Office. All other product or service names are the property of their respective owners.

Photo: NewsCom: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20020307/MOTLOGOhttp://www.newscom.com/cgi-b
in/prnh/20020415/MOTNOTAGLOGOAP Archive: http://photoarchive.ap.org/PRN Photo Desk, [email protected]

Motorola

CONTACT: WiMAX World USA: Kathi Haas of Motorola Networks & Enterprise,+1-480-732-2835 - office, +1-480-748-6456 - mobile, [email protected];Broadband World Forum/WiMAX Global ComForum: Gemma Priscott of MotorolaNetworks & Enterprise, EMEA, +44-7970-882994, [email protected];Wireless Broadband Week, Singapore: Cordia So of Motorola Networks &Enterprise, Asia Pacific, +852-2966-3840, [email protected]; Global WiMAXSummit in China 2006: Guo Tian of Motorola Networks & Enterprise, China+861065642599, [email protected]

Web site: http://www.motorola.com/http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/calendar.jsp

OMAHA, Neb. --(Business Wire)-- Transaction Systems Architects Inc. (Nasdaq:TSAI), will hold a conference call to discuss the press release announcing Transaction Systems Architects Closes P&H Solutions Acquisition and Provides Update on Corporate Strategy & Financial Guidance today, Monday, October 2, 2006 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time (10:00 a.m. Central Time).

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This call is being webcast by Thomson/CCBN and can be accessed at Transaction Systems Architects Inc. web site at www.tsainc.com/investors. The web cast will be archived for 14 days after the teleconference at the same web address.

The webcast is also being distributed through the Thomson StreetEvents Network. Individual investors can listen to the call at www.earnings.com, Thomson's individual investor portal, powered by StreetEvents. Institutional investors can access the call via Thomson Street Events (www.streetevents.com), a password-protected event management site.

About Transaction Systems Architects Inc.

The Company's software facilitates electronic payments by providing consumers and companies access to their money. Its products are used to process transactions involving credit cards, debit cards, secure electronic commerce, mobile commerce, smart cards, secure electronic document delivery and payment, checks, high-value money transfers, bulk payment clearing and settlement, and enterprise e-infrastructure. The Company's solutions are used by approximately 900 customers in 83 countries on six continents. Visit Transaction Systems Architects Inc. at www.tsainc.com.

Pacific Coast Bankers’ Bank (PCBB) has selected Open Solutions’ enterprise-wide data processing platform.

 

PCBB will use The Complete Banking Solution (TCBS), and other Open Solutions’ complementary applications such as Financial Accounting Suite (general ledger, accounts payable and fixed assets) and cView, MyVision and Report Wizard.

 

The new agreement builds on an existing relationship created when Open Solutions signed an agreement with PCBB in September 2005 to offer PCBB customers its image item processing services as a complement to PCBB’s cash letter settlement service.

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The bank was searching for an open architecture application that would allow the Correspondent Bank Connection (CBC), its online, user friendly and robust cash management communications application to interface in a dynamic environment.

 

The bank also wanted a core platform that could change as it grow, in assets as well as in customers, products and services.

 

“One of the contributors to PCBB’s significant growth and continued success is its ability to respond quickly in an innovative manner to meet both the current and the developing correspondent banking needs of its respondents,” said Tom Evans, president and CEO of PCBB in a press release.

 

He continued: “We are very impressed with the accounts payable, fixed assets and the cView reporting tools. The cView report writer will allow us to create custom reports from many different applications including the core processor, CBC and others.”

 

Louis Hernandez, Jr., Open Solutions chairman and CEO added that correspondent banking services are fundamental in the community banking market.

 

Pacific Coast Bankers’ Bank is reportedly the second largest bankers’ bank in the United States in terms of assets under management with $473 million in assets. The bank claims to provide correspondent banking services to more than 400 independent community banks across the country.

 

For more information, visit Open Solutions or Pacific Coast Bankers’ Bank.

 

-----

 

Anuradha Shukla is a contributing writer for TMCnet covering call centers, CRM and information technology.

 

 

(Scotland on Sunday Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) VENTURE capital company Scottish Equity Partners is expected to announce tomorrow that it has raised the biggest fund in Europe this year.

A number of blue-chip investors have poured GBP 160m into the fund - significantly higher than the GBP 120m initially targeted.

It will be re-invested mainly in emerging technology, healthcare and energy-related companies, including SEP's first forays into mainland Europe.

The Glasgow-based company is already the biggest independent venture capital firm in Britain and its growing reputation has won support from investors such as Swiss Re, Skandia, Etera Mutual Pension Insurance Company (Finland), Gartmore and Finama.

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They have contributed to SEP III, which was launched earlier this year and has now closed oversubscribed. Current investors in SEP funds include the European Investment Fund (EIF), Foreign & Colonial Private Equity Trust and Royal Bank of Scotland, who are also understood to have invested in the new fund.

It will mark the second time in five years that SEP has raised a fund in excess of GBP 100m - a considerable achievement for a company that until 2000 was the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise.

Its biggest returns have been made on investments in companies such as Stagecoach and Wolfson Microelectronics. In the case of the latter it made an astonishing 70 times its original investment when the firm floated on the stock market.

This latest fund should allow SEP to invest in another 20-30 companies. Calum Paterson, managing director, was delighted with the outcome.

"Fundraising has gone very well and we have ended up oversubscribed and above target, which reflects positively on our investment team and strategy," he said. "Our objective was not to raise as much money as possible but to cap the fund at a sensible level relative to the market we operate in. We have attracted a much broader investor base than in previous funds and that will stand us in good stead for the future." SEP, which also has offices in London, invested GBP 100m of the SEP II fund in 30 emerging companies. The latest fund will follow the same strategy.

"The UK is the most vibrant venture capital market in Europe, and our fundraising is a vote of confidence in the market as well as in SEP," Paterson said. "We have already identified a number of decent investment opportunities for the new fund and have a strong investment pipeline across all three of our core areas of focus." Paterson is delighted to have bucked the trend against a barrage of negative sentiment towards venture capital as an asset class. "In the context of European venture capital this is a very successful outcome and a great platform," he said, "It reflects very well on us." Paterson said he had identified a number of potential investment targets and that there is a pipeline of opportunities for the firm.

He was disappointed by comments from Nicol Stephen, the Enterprise Minister, who told a conference in Edinburgh that private sector financiers were hampering the drive to improve the number of start-ups by starving them of risk capital.

Stephen disagreed with those who said there was a shortage of good ideas and good management teams. The problem was a shortage of initial venture capital, he said. He was speaking to the Globalscot conference - an event staged for a network of expatriate Scots helping to bring business to Scotland.

Paterson said: "This is out of step with reality. We do not set out to avoid risk. On the contrary, we are looking to embrace risk, but we are selective about companies. We are still funding firms at the pre-revenue stage, anything from GBP 500,000."

Copyright 2006 Scotland on Sunday. Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Europe Intelligence Wire.

BOSTON --(Business Wire)-- PaperThin, Inc. a leading content management software vendor, today announced that United Way of America, the nation's largest private charity, will implement CommonSpot to increase brand consistency and manage Web content for multiple sites. The organization plans to standardize on a single content management solution to centralize the administration of its Web properties, while empowering non-technical users to easily manage content.

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United Way of America serves a national network of more than 1,300 locally governed organizations, all of which share a common brand identity. Many of these organizations operate their own Web presence, relying on custom applications and static content. United Way of America will transition its various Web properties to CommonSpot to provide a streamlined experience for end users. This solution can be easily leveraged and extended to benefit interested local United Way organizations.

United Way of America selected CommonSpot because of its flexible architecture, ease of use, and ability to scale to meet the organization's growing needs. Brian Leamy, Vice President of Enterprise Strategy, United Way of America stated, "Standardizing on this content management solution will enable us to broaden communications, disseminate a uniform brand and message, and create a common and engaging experience for users. This solution can also be easily leveraged throughout our entire system."

Leamy continued, "We chose CommonSpot because its architecture favorably aligns with our technology infrastructure and United Way-centric applications. This will allow us to easily preserve items and seamlessly integrate them within multiple sites. CommonSpot also provides a high level of scalability, which will be critical to our global efforts," he concluded.

CommonSpot provides a number of key benefits to United Way of America, including the ability to:

-- Maintain a core brand experience across United Way of America Web properties while bolstering communications.

-- Provide local United Way organizations the opportunity to build and deploy a Web site and manage localized content.

-- Provide both United Way of America and local United Way organizations the ability to replace custom applications with a robust solution that will reduce Web development and maintenance costs and empower non-technical users to manage content.

"CommonSpot is well suited to support The United Way of America's organizational goals and initiatives," said Bob Cellucci, senior vice president of sales and marketing for PaperThin, Inc. "The impending rollout of CommonSpot for its national Web site, its intranet/extranet, and also as an option for local United Way organizations, will strengthen donor relations, deliver a unified brand experience, and a consistent message. We're very pleased to have been chosen to be part of this strategic initiative."

About PaperThin:

PaperThin, Inc. is a privately held Massachusetts-based company. Since 1993, PaperThin has helped organizations in the corporate, government, education, healthcare, association and non-profit sectors, among others, to significantly reduce the time and expense involved in creating, updating, and managing Web content. PaperThin's flagship product, CommonSpot(TM) Content Server, powers Internet, intranet and extranet sites worldwide for organizations of all sizes, including the AFL-CIO, Babson College, Cornell University, Mayo Clinic, National Park Service, Stanford University, The Gillette Company, Turner Sports (PGA.com), and Vanderbilt University. CommonSpot was named a "Trend-Setting Product of 2005 & 2006" by KMWorld and has been twice recognized for Good Value among leading content management vendors by industry analysts at CMS Watch. PaperThin was recognized as one of New England's fastest growing technology companies in the 2004 & 2005 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and was recently named to KMWorld's list of "100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management."

PaperThin's select group of partners includes industry leading Web design and development firms, system integrators, software manufacturers, and training firms, worldwide. For more information about PaperThin, Inc., please visit http://www.paperthin.com and for additional details about CommonSpot Content Server, visit http://www.paperthin.com/Products/Index.cfm.

About United Way:

United Way is a national network of more than 1,300 locally governed organizations that work to create lasting positive changes in communities and people's lives. Building on more than a century of service as the nation's preeminent community-based fundraiser, United Way engages the community to identify the underlying causes of the most significant local issues, develops strategies and pulls together financial and human resources to address them, and measures the results. United Way of America is the national organization dedicated to leading the United Way movement. While local United Ways tackle issues based on local needs, common focus areas include helping children and youth succeed, improving access to health care, promoting self-sufficiency, and strengthening families. For more information about United Way, please visit: www.unitedway.org.

FRISCO, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc. today announced that its GlobalSTORE software was named a leader in the September 2006 Forrester Wave(TM) report titled "POS Software, Q3 2006." In the report, Fujitsu ranked as a leader in both the Store Operations Platforms approach and Enterprise-Centric Solutions approach to point-of-sale (POS) software.

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Forrester Research evaluated GlobalSTORE and its POS software strategy against 137 criteria and compared that evaluation against other industry vendors. According to the report, "Overall, Forrester ranked the product best in class in current offerings, with particular strengths in core POS and transaction types, and Fujitsu is one of the strongest vendors in security and PCI requirements support."

Fujitsu received top scores for the following criteria in both the Store Operations Platforms and Enterprise-Centric Solutions approaches:

-- Core POS

-- Transaction Types

-- Product Strategy and Vision

-- Corporate Strategy

"This is yet another very significant achievement for our GlobalSTORE software in 2006, and a testament to the strength of our store systems approach," said Austen Mulinder, president and chief executive officer at Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc. "Fujitsu was the only company that received the maximum score (5) for 'Product strategy and vision' and 'Corporate strategy' for both Store Operations Platforms and Enterprise-Centric Solutions categories. This is strong recognition for the strategic approach and value delivered by Fujitsu's Pervasive Retailing(TM) Framework, a component of GlobalSTORE, which creates a single, store-centric platform to connect retail hardware, software and customer touch points."

Reprints of The Forrester Wave(TM): POS Software, Q3 2006 report is available on the Fujitsu Web site at http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/retailing/software/forrester.

Fujitsu's GlobalSTORE application is a full-featured, customizable POS, cash management and back office solution. Based on the Microsoft Windows(R) platform, the flexibility of Fujitsu's retail-specific, modular architecture has enabled GlobalSTORE to be deployed at leading retailers around the world. Built on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) within the application, GlobalSTORE is easy to customize, maintain and integrate, which lowers the retailer's total cost of ownership. Leveraging the Pervasive Retailing Framework, GlobalSTORE integrates with virtually any customer relationship management application, store system, kiosk and in-store mobile computing device.

GlobalSTORE has played a significant role in Fujitsu's growth over the past three years, as the company added more than 40 new clients to its retail solutions roster. Many of those new accounts are GlobalSTORE customers, including Nordstrom, Payless ShoeSource, OfficeMax and Danier Leather. GlobalSTORE is deployed at more than 140 customers in 36 countries.

Fujitsu's Pervasive Retailing Framework is a set of software tools and services designed to minimize the time, cost and risk of creating real-time interoperability between disparate applications and devices that support multiple retailing interactions.

About Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc.

Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702), collaborates with retailing companies to relentlessly reduce their costs and facilitate consumer interactions that improve their profitability. Fujitsu's Pervasive Retailing(TM) approach enables companies to minimize the time, cost and risk of creating interoperability between disparate applications and devices that support a multitude of consumer touch points. Fujitsu's offering includes solution software, point-of-sale store technology, U-Scan self-checkout systems, self-ordering systems and multi-vendor lifecycle services. Customers include Canadian Tire, Chevron Corporation, Hallmark, Hannaford Bros., H-E-B, Kroger, Loblaws, Nordstrom, Payless ShoeSource, PetSmart, Regal Cinema, Staples, Stop & Shop and The TJX Companies, among others. The company also has a joint venture with Retalix Ltd. (NASDAQ:RTLX) in StoreNext Retail Technologies LLC, the No. 1 supplier of retail technology to independent grocers and regional chains. For more information, please see: us.fujitsu.com/retailing

For sales and product information call 1-800-340-4425.

Ref: 06-33

SEATTLE --(Business Wire)-- Dialpro Northwest, a leading provider of enterprise voice messaging systems, today announced that it has been awarded a contract by Central Oregon Community College to design and install a unified messaging system across the college's 200-acre campus.

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Terms of the contract were not disclosed; however, the new system will replace the college's current conventional 700-user Octel voice messaging system. Initial installation of the system, which will enable users to access voice mail, email and fax with a single graphical PC-based interface, has been completed, with plans to roll it out campus -wide in the upcoming weeks.

"For some time we had been looking to move from our current proprietary voice messaging system to one that was more industry standards based," said Gary Kontich, network administrator for COCC. "We've been very interested in unified messaging concepts of integrating voice messaging, email and fax as a way both to increase productivity as well as to better leverage our Microsoft Exchange server. This was a competitive bid and we selected Dialpro Northwest both for its price and for our almost 15 years of excellent service and support from them."

"We're pleased to have been chosen by COCC for this project," said Dennis R. Tyler, president and CEO of Dialpro Northwest. "With the proliferation of various communications and messaging technologies, unified messaging is becoming an increasingly important tool for increasing productivity and the bottom line. We're happy that COCC chose us as their partner for this important step."

According to Kontich, the system has performed effortlessly thus far. "The system implementation and support from Dialpro have been stupendous," he said. "The new systems telephone user interface, which emulates our old system, has made the time required for training non-existent."

Founded in 1988, Dialpro Northwest Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise voice messaging systems and unified communications in the Pacific Northwest. Its customers include enterprises in business, government, education and healthcare worldwide. Dialpro, which partners with many of the leading manufacturers, has extensive knowledge and experience in providing and supporting enterprise voice messaging systems. For more information, please visit the company website at www.dialpronw.com.

MILPITAS, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: PTEC), the global market leader in core system software, today announced that it has appointed Richard Arnold as Executive Vice President of Strategy and Corporate Development, effective immediately.

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"We are very pleased to have Rich join the team at Phoenix," said Woody Hobbs, President and CEO. "He brings a combination of strategic thinking and extensive transactional experience. His knowledge of high technology companies and the related investment markets will assist us greatly as we build from the strong base we have here at Phoenix. Rich and I have previously worked together very successfully, at both Intellisync and Charles Schwab & Co, and I look forward to his help in building substantial value for the Phoenix shareholders as well."

Arnold served on the board of Intellisync Corporation as Chairman of both the Audit Committee and the Special Strategy Committee which led the Board process that concluded with the sale of Intellisync to Nokia, a $430 million transaction which closed in February 2006. He held numerous management roles at Charles Schwab and Co., Inc. between 1977 and 1990, including those of CFO, EVP Service Delivery and EVP Strategy and Corporate Development, during which time the company grew from approximately 30 employees to over 6,000. (Hobbs was CEO of Intellisync and both EVP and CIO of Schwab during Arnold's tenure with those companies.)

Since June 2001, Arnold has served as a founding partner of Committed Capital Proprietary Limited, a private equity investment company based in Sydney, Australia. He had previously served as Executive Director of Consolidated Press Holdings, a private investment company based in Sydney. Previously, Arnold served as Managing Director of TD Waterhouse Australia, a securities dealer; as Chief Executive Officer of Integrated Decisions and Systems, Inc., an application software company; and as Managing Director of Eagleroo Proprietary Limited, a corporate advisory company.

Arnold is a graduate of Stanford University, the Executive Program in Finance at Stanford's Graduate School of Business and the NYSE and NASDAQ sponsored Director's College. He has been an Allied Member of the New York Stock Exchange and both a Registered Principal and a Registered Financial and Operations Principal of the NASD.

In connection with his appointment, and as an incentive to his joining, Arnold was granted a non-qualified inducement stock option to purchase 600,000 shares of common stock of Phoenix, par value $0.001 per share, with an exercise price equal to $4.45 (USD), the closing sale price of the Company's stock on September 27, 2006, the grant date. Assuming Arnold remains actively employed by Phoenix, the option will vest and become exercisable with respect to 25% of the total number of shares underlying the option on September 27, 2007, and 1/48 of the total number of shares underlying the option each month thereafter. The vesting of the options will accelerate if Arnold's employment is terminated without cause or for good reason after a change of control. If the change of control occurs within six months of Arnold's date of hire, 1/3 of the shares will vest, if the change of control occurs after six months but less than 12 months after Arnold's date of hire, 2/3 of the shares will vest, and if the change of control occurs after 12 months, all of the shares will vest. The inducement options were granted outside of the terms of any existing Phoenix equity incentive plan and without shareholder approval pursuant to NASDAQ Marketplace Rule 4350(i)(1)(A)(iv).

About Phoenix Technologies Ltd.

Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: PTEC) is a global market leader in core system software and applications that assure endpoint confidence. The company first established dominant industry leadership 26 years ago with BIOS software, currently has over one billion products deployed and continues to ship in over 100 million new systems each year. From this unique foundation, Phoenix has created a portfolio of innovative software products that simply and easily identify and restore devices, thereby ensuring unparalleled endpoint security and availability.

With a focused commitment to the highest levels of customer confidence and satisfaction, Phoenix serves enterprise and government channel partners, ODMs, OEMs, system builders and ISVs by enabling them to decrease time to market, differentiate their products, create value, increase profits and lower cost of ownership. Phoenix is headquartered in Milpitas, Calif., with offices worldwide in global business and technology centers. For more information, visit www.phoenix.com.

Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: With the exception of historical information, the statements set forth above include forward-looking statements that involve risk and uncertainties. All forward-looking statements included in this document are based upon information available to the Company as of the date hereof, and the Company assumes no obligation to update any such forward looking statement. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward looking statements are discussed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Phoenix, Phoenix Technologies, and the Phoenix Technologies logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Phoenix Technologies Ltd. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

LEXINGTON, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- BladeLogic, Inc., the world's leading provider of data center automation software, today announced that one of its customers, priceline.com, has received the Enterprise All-Star Award from Network World magazine for its sophisticated application of data center automation software to manage mission-critical changes to thousands of servers in its three data centers.

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The Network World Enterprise All-Star Award program recognizes exceptional use of technology to further enterprise business objectives. For the 2006 award, Network World editors selected 40 enterprise IT organizations representing the best, most innovative application of technologies in eight different categories. These award-winning IT projects were profiled in Network World's special edition Signature Series Enterprise All-Star Issue published on September 25, 2006. Priceline.com was recognized in the Network Management category, which includes Systems Management.

In a corresponding article by Editor Beth Schultz, Ron Rose, the CIO of the Norwalk, CT travel giant, credits BladeLogic's data center automation software for enabling priceline.com to be recognized for website uptime and providing a 60% reduction in administrative work required to maintain the site. BladeLogic's data center automation software is used to provision, update, patch and troubleshoot servers and applications, as well as to roll-out new application releases and updates without impacting the availability or performance of the website.

BladeLogic recently announced the availability of BladeLogic Release 7, the industry's most advanced data center automation platform. Release 7 helps IT organizations dramatically improve IT service quality, significantly reduce operational costs, better enable compliance to operational, security and regulatory policies, and provide greater agility to respond to an ever-increasing rate of change in the data center.

"We are extremely proud that priceline.com has been recognized by Network World for its data center operational excellence through its application of BladeLogic's data center automation software," said Dev Ittycheria, president and CEO, BladeLogic. "Over the past four years priceline.com has utilized BladeLogic's technology to automate a wide range of vital server management tasks. By doing so, priceline.com has been able to significantly increase data center efficiencies, lower operating costs and deliver superior website reliability and uptime. We congratulate the priceline.com team on receiving this prestigious award and look forward to helping them maintain their reputation as a leader in data center operations excellence."

About Network World

Network World, Inc., the Leader in Network Knowledge, empowers Network IT Executives through education, information and community. Network World, an IDG company, is the leading provider of news, analysis, reviews, events and education on information technology. Network World publishes the leading newsweekly, Network World, hosts the most active online community (www.networkworld.com), and produces educational seminars and events worldwide. Network World's portfolio of strategic marketing programs provides marketing and agency professionals with the tools to generate high-quality leads, optimize marketing campaigns and create new revenue opportunities.

About BladeLogic

BladeLogic is the world's leading provider of next-generation data center automation software with the largest installed base of Global 2000 and other leading customers, including such organizations as Capgemini, E*Trade, HSBC, Lockheed Martin, priceline.com, Time Warner, VeriSign, Virgin Mobile and Walmart.com. BladeLogic's award-winning suite of enterprise-class data center automation solutions enables organizations of any size to achieve continuous configuration compliance across large-scale, distributed server and application environments, resulting in dramatically reduced data center operating costs, improved service quality, increased efficiencies, and enhanced compliance and security. BladeLogic is a privately held company headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. For more information, please visit www.bladelogic.com.

MILLBURN, N.J. --(Business Wire)-- GRISOFT, the supplier of AVG security software, today announced the global launch of AVG 7.5 security portfolio with the most comprehensive product line ever released. The extended security offerings for home, SMBs and enterprise users comprise improved and new products, including AVG Internet Security 7.5, an all-inclusive security suite.

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A significant addition to the AVG security software portfolio, AVG Internet Security 7.5, includes the most recent anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-spam and firewall technologies with reliable automatic updates while consuming a low level of computer resources for convenient use. In the AVG Internet Security Network Edition, GRISOFT offers centralized remote administration, which allows for remote installation, updating and management of all workstations and servers.

GRISOFT's existing portfolio for home, small and medium business users is now expanded to include AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 and AVG Anti-Malware 7.5 products. AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 offers protection against Trojans, spyware, adware, dialers, keyloggers and worms. The AVG Anti-Malware program combines the latest anti-spyware and antivirus technologies within a single, easy-to-use interface.

GRISOFT also broadens its offerings to provide enterprise users with versions of AVG Anti-Virus, AVG File Server and AVG Email Server that are compatible with the GNU/Linux and FreeBSD operating systems. Along with the new products, there are substantial improvements to the overall portfolio with enhanced data protection, automatic updates, access to 24/7 customer support and a single, user-friendly interface.

"GRISOFT's focus has always been providing users with the most comprehensive and proactive computer security solutions on the market," said Larry Bridwell, Vice President of Communications of GRISOFT. "With AVG 7.5 and, more specifically, Internet Security 7.5, we've taken another step toward truly providing all users with security software that can continually protect them from the growing number of cyber and computer threats."

Pricing and Availability

GRISOFT now offers the option of a 1-year or a 2-year licence. The price of AVG Anti-Virus 7.5 starts at $29.95 for a one-year license and $38.95 for a two-year licence, which includes the option of free updates. A one-year license for AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 is available for $29.95. A two-year license for AVG Internet Security 7.5 starts at $69.95.

All products in the AVG 7.5 portfolio are immediately accessible on the GRISOFT website www.grisoft.com and via its extensive network of channel sales partners located throughout the world.

About GRISOFT

www.grisoft.com

GRISOFT is a leading provider of antivirus, firewall protection and security solutions for consumers and SMEs. It is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry with more than 30 million users around the world that rely on GRISOFT AVG products to protect their computers and networks.

Established in 1991, GRISOFT employs some of the world's leading experts in antivirus software, specifically in the areas of virus analysis and detection, software development, and antivirus support. GRISOFT award-winning products are distributed globally through resellers and the Internet as well as via AVG Anti-Virus Software Developer's Kit (SDK) to interested partners.

BILLERICA, Mass. --(Business Wire)-- Getronics, a global leader in workspace management IT services, today announced that Security and Communications Director Emmitt Wells has accepted an invitation to participate in a panel discussion entitled, 'Introduction to VoIP Security' at TMC's INTERNET TELEPHONY(R) Conference & EXPO West 2006 on October 13, 2006 at the San Diego Convention Center.

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"While performance and availability of a VoIP system are extremely important, security often times is of great concern when companies deploy VoIP," said Wells. "By weaving security in from the onset, VoIP can be a powerful enterprise communications solution that significantly enhances worker productivity and enables cost savings."

INTERNET TELEPHONY(R) Conference & EXPO, held October 10-13, 2006, is the world's largest and best-attended IP Communications trade show. Last January, the show drew over 8,000 buyers and sellers of IP Communications products and services to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. For this upcoming October show, TMC projects total attendance to exceed 9,000.

"We are very pleased that Emmitt Wells will be participating in this year's show. Getronics is widely recognized and respected as a global leader in workspace management IT services, and I am confident that our attendees will appreciate and value the opportunity to hear Emmitt's perspective on VoIP security," said TMC president and conference chairman, Rich Tehrani. "Over the past twelve months, widespread deployment of IP Communications services by global service providers, businesses and governments has reinforced that this exciting technology is a viable, cost-effective communications solution. As a result, we are seeing a significant number of senior-level executives attending INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO as a means of learning about the technology so they too can take advantage of its benefits."

Registration for the show is now open. Anyone interested may register by visiting www.itexpo.com.

About Getronics

With some 25,000 employees in over 25 countries and approximate revenues of USD $3.1 billion, Getronics is one of the world's leading providers of workspace management services.

Getronics designs, deploys, and manages flexible and innovative end-to-end solutions, working together with our partners and clients, in order to optimize and increase the productivity of our clients' mobile knowledge workers.

Getronics headquarters are in Amsterdam, with regional offices in Boston, Madrid, and Singapore. Getronics' shares are traded on Euronext Amsterdam ("GTN"). For further information about Getronics, visit www.getronics.com/us.

About TMC(R)

Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC) publishes four print publications: Customer Interaction Solutions, INTERNET TELEPHONY, SIP Magazine and IMS Magazine. TMCnet, TMC's Web site, is the leading source of news and articles for the communications and technology industries. Ranked in the top 1,600 sites in the world by alexa.com*, TMCnet serves more than one million unique visitors each month. TMC is also the first publisher to test new products in its own on-site laboratories, TMC Labs. In addition, TMC produces INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO, The VoIP Developer Conference, VoIP Demo, IMS Expo and Call Center 2.0 Conference. TMCnet.com publishes more than 15 topical online newsletters. For more information about TMC, visit www.tmcnet.com. (*alexa.com is an amazon.com company that ranks Web sites by their traffic levels. Neither alexa.com nor amazon.com is affiliated with TMCnet.)

NASHUA, N.H. --(Business Wire)-- EqualLogic(R), a leading provider of enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions, today announced that EqualLogic's PS Series storage has been qualified with VMware Infrastructure 3. Based on the completion of interoperability testing, EqualLogic PS Series will now be included in the Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX Server 3, now part of VMware Infrastructure 3, as a supported storage platform. This compatibility is designed to provide customers with an integrated and jointly supported environment when deploying VMware Infrastructure with EqualLogic SANs.

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By deploying EqualLogic SANs with VMware Infrastructure 3, IT managers are leveraging a simple, flexible and cost-effective virtual storage solution that can adapt to changing business requirements. EqualLogic's PS Series SAN enables simple storage consolidation, which allows a virtual infrastructure to increase storage utilization, enrich corporate data protection methods, facilitate disaster recovery and enhance virtualized server availability and workload migration. In addition, EqualLogic's fully redundant infrastructure provides an easy-to-use and disaster-tolerant SAN solution for VMware Infrastructure 3.

"Our customers' VMware enterprise deployments require true enterprise-class data protection, with fully redundant infrastructures and remote-site disaster recovery capabilities - the PS Series' built-in storage management capabilities meet these customer needs out-of-the-box," said John Joseph, vice president of marketing at EqualLogic. "With the fantastic growth rates that iSCSI SANs and infrastructure virtualization technologies are experiencing, our partnership with VMware is a factor in driving widespread adoption of EqualLogic's storage arrays."

"Combining the EqualLogic PS Series and VMware ESX Server 3 is a great example of the power and efficiency of deploying iSCSI SANs with VMware Infrastructure 3. Such combinations enable customers to optimize their computing and storage infrastructures. They also deliver the dynamic data center capabilities of VMware Infrastructure 3," said Parag Patel, senior director of storage ecosystem alliances at VMware. "VMware Infrastructure 3's native support of iSCSI demonstrates VMware's commitment to working with EqualLogic and the iSCSI ecosystem for our customers' benefit."

Additionally, companies worldwide are adopting VMware Infrastructure 3 and EqualLogic PS Series virtualized SANs as iSCSI becomes increasingly popular for networked storage. The IDC Worldwide Disk Storage Systems 2006-2010 Forecast and Analysis report published in May projected that the iSCSI SAN market will continue to be the fastest-growing segment of the storage industry through 2010.

Companies that are jointly deploying VMware Infrastructure 3 and EqualLogic storage platforms into production include:

-- Arch Coal, Inc.

-- Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant Group, Inc.

-- Intermec Technologies Corp.

-- Kane County, Ill.

-- Mount Saint Mary College

-- Pathfire

-- Steel and Pipe Supply Company

-- VSR Financial Services.

"As the leading supplier of digital media distribution and asset management technology and services to the television news and entertainment industries, we require a highly reliable, enterprise-class storage and systems architecture to support our customers' mission-critical 24x7 media services," said Mike Stawchansky, senior systems administrator at Pathfire. "We've deployed EqualLogic storage and VMware Infrastructure 3 into our back office systems at our Roswell, Georgia facility, supporting our Digital Media Gateway Network, which is used to distribute digital video to broadcasters worldwide. Using EqualLogic and VMware together significantly reduced the complexity of our environment, allowing us to consolidate both servers and storage with an innovative solution that is not only cost effective and simple to manage but also delivers better performance than alternative products."

The compatibility between the EqualLogic PS Series and VMware Infrastructure 3, as noted in the Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware ESX Server 3, includes iSCSI base connectivity, storage processor failover, boot from SAN, network interface card failover and host bus adapter failover. In addition, the PS Series is compatible with VMware Infrastructure 3's advanced features including VMware VMotion technology for eliminating downtime, VMware High Availability to ensure uptime of virtual machines and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler for automated workload distribution.

EqualLogic is a member of the VMware Technology Alliance Program. Membership in the program allows EqualLogic and VMware to jointly drive go-to-market efforts and technical solutions in support of our mutual customers.

About EqualLogic

EqualLogic(R), Inc., is the leading provider of intelligent, enterprise-class iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions that enable businesses - from Fortune 100 to small and mid-size organizations in more than 30 countries worldwide - to realize the economic benefits of consolidated, self-managing storage. The EqualLogic PS Series of storage arrays, based on the company's patented peer storage architecture delivers operational simplicity, comprehensive data management services and high data availability in a single, scalable pool of storage. EqualLogic's headquarters are located in Nashua, New Hampshire. For more information, please visit http://www.equallogic.com.

EqualLogic is a registered trademark of EqualLogic, Inc. Other marks belong to their respective owners.

LEAGUE CITY, Texas --(Business Wire)-- ERF Wireless (OTCBB:ERFW), a leading provider of secure enterprise-class wireless broadband products and services, announced today that it was invited to present its patent-pending CryptoVue(TM) secure network solution at the annual Motorola Wireless Broadband Channel Summit 006 being held on Monday, October 2, through Friday, October 6, 2006, at the Westin La Paloma Resort & Spa in Tucson, Arizona.

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The annual convention offers Motorola channel members and affiliates a first-hand look at ERF's state-of-the-art technology solutions, with emphasis on the future of secure telecommunications infrastructure. Conference attendees have shown a great deal of interest in the Motorola Canopy solutions combined with the ERF CryptoVue technology that provides banks and other regulated industries with a method of creating secure voice, video and data communications networks. John Burns, Chairman and CEO of ERF Enterprise Network Services Inc., has been asked to address the General Session on Tuesday and make a presentation of the Motorola Canopy / ERF CryptoVue solution. Attendees include both domestic and international resellers, sales, marketing, and engineering personnel.

According to Burns, the company is expanding its distribution footprint nationwide by partnering with selected Motorola Canopy resellers to open up previously untapped markets that require highly secure communications. The financial institution market alone is estimated at over $9 billion. Other markets being addressed include hospitals, law enforcement, schools and government.

"Unlike conventional VPNs, the ERF CryptoVue technology implements strong encryption with monitored, biometric controls to really lock down a wireless network to satisfy regulatory requirements. We are here this week to identify selected Motorola channel members to deploy and support the next generation of secure, wireless communications networks," says Burns. "These high-speed telecommunications networks require a local presence for sales referrals, installation, maintenance and support that the Motorola channel members and affiliates are uniquely positioned to provide us."

Perry Vincent, President and CEO of Louisiana Radio Corporation (LRC), a Motorola MSS partner and a Motorola Authorized Solutions Provider, has worked with ERF Wireless for several years to deploy and maintain two ERF banking networks in the Southern Louisiana area. "ERF Wireless is a first-class organization that generates the sales leads, works with a local Motorola reseller to sell and specify the project, and then designs, engineers and monitors the secure network under a 5-year contract to a bank," Vincent said. "The Motorola reseller is responsible for building and maintaining the network under contract to ERF on behalf of the bank. We are pleased in our strategic partnership with ERF to tackle this huge market and generate new sales and service opportunities. We highly recommend doing business with ERF Wireless to the Motorola channel members and affiliates. It has been a great success for us."

Burns went on to note that the demand for item imaging, video conferencing, voice over IP, image clearing, fast Internet access and surveillance systems is on the rise. "The problem in the past has been how to properly secure a high-speed wireless network for these advanced digital products in regulated industries. Now that our CryptoVue networks have been subjected to numerous regulatory examinations, internal audits and vulnerability assessments, we are ready to launch a nationwide distribution channel with selected Motorola resellers," said Burns. "Our initial target is community, regional and nationwide financial institutions in the U.S. We believe that together ERF Wireless and Motorola are perfectly positioned to gain a substantial share of that $9 billion market."

About ERF Wireless

ERF Wireless Inc. is a fully reporting public corporation (OTCBB:ERFW) that specializes in providing secure wireless broadband product and service solutions to banking and commercial clients on a national basis. Its principals have been in the network integration, Internet banking, and encryption technology businesses for over twenty years and have constructed encrypted, wireless broadband networks as well as secure Internet banking solutions for hundreds of banks across America. For more information about ERF Wireless, please visit www.erfwireless.com or call 281-538-2101. (ERFWG)

CryptoVue(TM) is a trademark of ERF Wireless and incorporates several patent-pending technologies filed with the US Patent & Trademark Office.

Forward-looking statements in this release regarding ERF Wireless Inc. and Motorola Canopy are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, continued acceptance of the company's products, increased levels of competition, new products and technological changes, the company's dependence upon third-party suppliers, intellectual property rights, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

WARREN, Mich. --(Business Wire)-- Research Federal Credit Union (RFCU) announced today that they will be providing their members and their members' families with identity theft resolution services and ongoing education -- at no additional cost. They will also offer extensive proactive resources that can be purchased for a minimal fee. The partnership with Identity Theft 911, the leading provider of identity theft education and resolution services, will provide members with one-on-one assistance from fraud expert advocates who can help restore and resolve credit and identity issues.

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"One out of every five Americans has become a victim of identity theft, or has fallen prey to some type of personal information intrusion in the past year. Because RFCU cares about its members and their families, we have researched and obtained what we feel is one of the best products on the market today," said Judy Janosevic, Loss Prevention/Security Manager at Research Federal Credit Union.

"Financial institutions employ many layers of security to foil attempts to steal data," said Daniel Munro, Vice President and Chief Information Officer at RFCU. "Any additional layer of security an individual can add to slow down the bad guys will reduce the risk of loss and the extent of any potential loss. Adding a tool like Identity Theft 911 can help you quickly recover from a breach of your personal security."

As part of the service through Identity Theft 911, RFCU members will receive:

-- Unlimited access to a personal advocate who will work one-on-one until their situation is resolved

-- Systematic notification to credit bureaus, creditors and collectors, government agencies, and relevant parties

-- Comprehensive case file creation to assist law enforcement and insurance agencies

-- Credit monitoring and fraud monitoring for a full year

-- Proactive education at www.identitytheft911-researchfed.com

Identity theft is currently the fastest growing crime in the United States, and Research Federal Credit Union is taking a critical step in the fight against this crime. Not only is RFCU gifting Identity Theft 911's premier resolution service to any members that become victimized, but also providing an option for those members wishing to be more proactive.

"For less than $.02 per day, the optional proactive credit monitoring service can help members limit their liability by detecting intrusion early," added Ms. Janosevic. "And if they ever become a victim of identity theft this service will guide them through the recovery process at no cost. It's a small price to pay for such a growing issue."

About Identity Theft 911

Identity Theft 911 provides enterprise-level fraud solutions to Fortune 500 companies, a wide spectrum of financial institutions, colleges and universities, and many of America's largest insurance companies and corporate benefits providers. Identity Theft 911 is a leader in identity theft victim resolution and education, with more than six million households currently included in its retainer-based program. The Company's cutting-edge products include: RB421(SM), retainer-based blanket resolution and proactive education; IDR911(SM), identity disaster response; SBR911(SM), security breach response; and ITA911(SM), identity travel assistance. Online Banking Report named Identity Theft 911 one of "the 10 most significant innovations and developments of 2003." For more information, visit www.identitytheft911.com.

About Research Federal Credit Union

Research Federal Credit Union is a not-for-profit financial cooperative headquartered in Warren, MI, with offices in Detroit's Renaissance Center (General Motors' world headquarters) and Milford, MI. The credit union serves employees and retirees (and their family members) from General Motors. RFCU also serves various Chambers of Commerce members and their employees in addition to several other organizations. With a membership of nearly 23,000 and more than $200 million in assets, Research Federal Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Michigan and the United States. For more information, contact Research Federal Credit Union at (586) 264-8710 or visit www.researchfed.com.

DALLAS --(Business Wire)-- Ed Newsome, Vice President and Senior Producer of Shareholder Vision, announced today that the web site has released a new video profile of On The Go Technologies Group (OTCBB:ONGO) ("the Company"). On The Go, founded by Toronto-based entrepreneur Stuart Turk in 2000, has evolved from single business entity into a multi holding and award-winning North American-wide corporation, acquiring established IT sales and service companies rich in versatility and industry potential. Via its four main divisions: OTG Enterprise, OTG Creative, OTG Healthcare and OTG Research, the Company has grown to a leading multi-industry computer hardware, software and systems integrator with 130 brand name product authorizations and over 1700 customers.

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By way of the 6 holdings in those divisions: Value Added Resellers ('VARs') Compuquest and Infinity Technologies, catering to Fortune 1000 and SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) clientele and vendors such as HP, Apple, IBM, SGI, Extreme Networks and Adobe; helios/oceana and Solutions In Computing, prominent systems integrators in the US and Canadian digital content entertainment market, education and printing industries; Island Corporation, compiling sophisticated digital diagnostic solutions and administrative networks for the medical and scientific research communities; and Go Motion + Design, the Company's complete in-house multimedia studio, OTG has established itself as a respected industry competitor. The Company's intention is to maintain sustained growth in the years to come via both continued organic development and an aggressive acquisition schedule.

To view the Shareholder Vision Video Profile for Avatar On The Go Technologies Group, please visit:

http://www.shareholdervision.com/profiles/ongo/

About Shareholder Vision

Small cap and microcap stocks investors are generally at a major disadvantage when it comes to getting accurate and complete information about the companies they are most interested in. Yes they can read press releases, SEC filings and industry articles. They want to know about the management of the company, the products of the company, the operations of the company and so much more. The look that Shareholder Vision gives investors from inside the company allows small cap and microcap investors to really see the company, meet the key executives and really get a look inside the walls of our client companies. Think of it as a visit to the company. Think of it as truly trying the products, seeing the operations first hand, a meeting with the management and really getting a feel for the company. That is what Shareholder Vision is all about.

To have Shareholder Vision feature a publicly traded company, please contact: Ed Newsome at (469) 252-3032; email [email protected]

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements contain words such as "expects," "believes," "anticipates" and "intends." Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, economic conditions affecting the B2B environment; continued ability to obtain hardware, software and peripherals at competitive costs; the company's ability to finance its planned expansion efforts; the company's ability to manage its planned growth; and changes in regulations affecting the company's business and such other risks disclosed from time to time in the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company does not intend to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this document to conform these statements to actual results or to changes in management's expectations, except as required by law.

Disclosure: Pentony Enterprises LLC and its affiliates have been compensated a total of 9,220 restricted 144 shares of stock and $23,500. Neither Pentony Enterprises nor any of its affiliates are registered investment advisers or broker/dealers. Pentony Enterprises LLC makes no recommendation that the purchase of securities of companies featured on our web sites are suitable or advisable for any person, or that an investment such securities will be profitable. In general, given the nature of the companies profiled and the lack of an active trading market for their securities, investing in such securities is highly speculative and carries a high degree of risk.

(AME Info - ME Company Newswire Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Al-Falak Electronic Equipment and Supplies Co., one of the Middle East's leading enterprise IT solutions integrators, has joined the Business Partner Program of CodeBaby, the leading innovator in Virtual Agent based customer care solutions.

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Copyright 2006 AME Info Source: Financial Times Information Limited - Asia Intelligence Wire.

MINNEAPOLIS --(Business Wire)-- Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FIC), the leading provider of analytics and decision management technology, announced today that leading analyst firm IDC has recognized Fair Isaac as the worldwide revenue leader in the Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS) software market.

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In the new IDC report titled "Worldwide Business Rules Management Systems Software 2006-2010 Forecast and 2005 Vendor Shares" (IDC #203627, September 2006), Fair Isaac leads the worldwide BRMS revenue category in 2005 with revenues of $45.1 million, growing a strong 28.6 percent compared to revenues of $35.1 million in 2004. Fair Isaac is ranked as the leader in BRMS market share with 23.9 percent worldwide and 33.4 percent in the key America market.

According to IDC, business rules management tools centralize the definition, discovery, storage, and submission of the vast quantity of rules used in business operations to provide organizations with greater automation, more responsiveness to change, and less expensive distribution and maintenance of their business activities. IDC anticipates that revenue for the worldwide BRMS market will continue to grow from its 2005 level of $188.5 million to $455.1 million in 2010, based on "the strong role that business rules management systems will have in building out the application infrastructure platforms."

"Business rules management systems are poised to become a common facet of application development," said Stephen D. Hendrick, group vice president for IDC's Application Development and Deployment research group. "Business rules management systems also play a key role in Enterprise Decision Management (EDM), which combines data analytics, predictive modeling, decision model optimization and policy-level control to help organizations define and manage their automated business systems for improved efficiency and greater profitability."

"The IDC ranking reflects the market's continued trust in Fair Isaac's decision management technologies at a time when more businesses are realizing the value of taking a more sophisticated, enterprise-level approach toward their critical decision processes," said William Waid, vice president, EDM Technology and Custom Solutions, Fair Isaac. "Our rules management technology continues to provide a foundation for EDM that is focused on helping businesses reach new levels of agility, consistency and precision in an increasingly complex, competitive and regulated global economy."

"Users who choose Blaze Advisor as part of the Enterprise Decision Management suite of products get far greater decision-making capabilities with their rules management," added William Waid. "Predictive modeling and rules management are combined in EDM to give organizations strong analysis and decision-making capabilities to aid in their planning and portfolio management."

The latest release of Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor(TM) business rules management system includes the advanced Rete III inference engine for best-in-class performance within complex, enterprise-class deployments and powerful rules management capabilities. Blaze Advisor BRMS is used by many of the world's leading companies. It is the first rules engine to support Java, .NET and COBOL deployment of the same rules. The multi-platform solution supports Web Services and SOA, Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platforms, Microsoft .NET and COBOL for z/OS mainframes.

About Fair Isaac

Fair Isaac (NYSE:FIC) makes decisions smarter. The company's solutions and technologies for Enterprise Decision Management give businesses the power to automate more processes, and apply more intelligence to every customer interaction. Through increasing the precision, consistency and agility of their decisions, Fair Isaac clients worldwide increase sales, build customer value, cut fraud losses, manage credit risk, reduce operational costs, meet changing compliance demands and enter new markets more profitably. Founded in 1956, Fair Isaac powers hundreds of billions of decisions per year in financial services, insurance, telecommunications, retail, consumer branded goods, healthcare and the public sector. Fair Isaac also helps millions of individuals manage their credit health through the www.myfico.com website. Visit Fair Isaac online at www.fairisaac.com.

Statement Concerning Forward-Looking Information

Except for historical information contained herein, the statements contained in this press release that relate to Fair Isaac, including statements regarding its Blaze Advisor product offering, and the benefits to be derived from this offering, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially, including any unforeseen technical difficulties related to the implementation, use and functionality of the offering, the risks that customers will not perceive material benefits from the offering, failure of the product to deliver the expected results, the possibility of errors or defects in the offering, regulatory changes applicable to the use of consumer credit and other data, and other risks described from time to time in Fair Isaac's SEC reports, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended September 30, 2005, and its quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the period ended June 30, 2006. Forward-looking statements should be considered with caution. If any of these risks or uncertainties materializes or any of these assumptions proves incorrect, Fair Isaac's results could differ materially from Fair Isaac's expectations in these statements. Fair Isaac disclaims any intent or obligation to update these forward-looking statements.

Fair Isaac and Blaze Advisor are trademarks or registered trademarks of Fair Isaac Corporation, in the United States and/or in other countries. Other product and company names herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

NEW ORLEANS --(Business Wire)-- Landmark, a brand of the Halliburton (NYSE:HAL) Digital and Consulting Solutions division, is introducing a new high-performance team-room visualization and interpretation solution at the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG) trade show in New Orleans. This new solution features Landmark's GeoProbe(R) software, the Verari Systems(TM) E&P 7500 visualization server and high-end NVIDIA(R) Quadro(R) graphics. It is specifically designed to help upstream oil and gas companies affordably manage large regional data sets, utilize advanced multi-attribute visualization and enable rapid, basin-scale decision making.

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Landmark's GeoProbe software, optimized for the DecisionSpace(R) environment, is the industry's most powerful visualization and interpretation solution. The new E&P 7500 server, with up to eight powerful AMD Opteron(R) processors, 128 gigabytes of memory and high-end NVIDIA(R) Quadro(R) graphics, is the only visualization server technology that takes full advantage of GeoProbe software's advanced functionality and that is approved for the entire Landmark suite.

With this solution, entire regional data sets can be investigated in detail, highlighting large-scale trends. These trends are easily missed when having to view identical data broken into multiple smaller-sized subsets.

In order to help customers experience first hand the price-performance value of this solution, Landmark will be showcasing a fully configured E&P 7500 server with optional NVIDIA Quadro(R) Plex 1000 visual computing system in its SEG booth No. 1326. As part of the Landmark theater presentations, Chris Loader, Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS) geophysical advisor, and David M Roberts, 3-DMR consultant in visualization, seismic interpretation and development geoscience, will use this solution and the PGS Southern North Sea (SNS) 3-D MegaSurvey to dramatically visualize and interpret 45,000-square kilometers of 3-D seismic data formed from the combination of the seismic data from more than 100 different 3-D surveys.

"The E&P 7500 server and NVIDIA Quadro Plex 1000 systems are valuable additions to Landmark's portfolio of E&P-optimized computing and infrastructure solutions," said Douglas Meikle, vice president, Landmark and Project Management. "With a price of less than $100,000 USD, a fully configured E&P 7500 is a natural and extremely cost-effective upgrade solution for those customers looking to replace their proprietary Unix(R)-based solutions and to power multidisciplinary team-room environments."

"The development of the Verari Systems E&P 7500 server and our latest relationship with Landmark create a powerful and cost-effective solution for oil and gas companies that are managing and operating digital oil fields," said David B. Wright, CEO, Verari Systems. "We are excited to bring to market the world's most scalable, industry-standards-based visualization solutions specifically designed to support the compute-intensive oil and gas industry and to meet its demanding needs."

About Landmark

Landmark, a brand of Halliburton Drilling, Evaluation and Digital Solutions, is the leading supplier of software, optimized computing solutions and services for the upstream oil and gas industry. The company's software solutions span exploration, production, drilling, business-decision analysis and data management. Landmark offers a broad range of consulting, services and infrastructure technologies that enable customers to optimize their technical, business and decision processes. Visit the Landmark Web site at www.lgc.com for more information on Landmark software, solutions and services.

About Verari Systems

Verari Systems, Inc. is the premier developer of powerful, flexible and scalable platform-independent blade computing and rackmount systems that are defining a new era in high-performance utility computing for the enterprise datacenter. Enterprises such as Akamai, Lockheed Martin, Lucasfilm Ltd., Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm, Sony Pictures Imageworks, Veritas DGC and Walt Disney Feature Animation are among more than 4,000 customers who have chosen Verari Systems' line of high-density blade server clusters, rack-optimized servers and award-winning software solutions. To learn more about Verari Systems and the E&P 7500 server, please visit http://www.verari.com/ or call 888-942-3800.

About NVIDIA Corporation

NVIDIA Corporation is the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies. The company creates innovative, industry-changing products for computing, consumer electronics and mobile devices. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and has offices throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. For more information, please visit www.nvidia.com.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. --(Business Wire)-- HealthStream, Inc. (NASDAQ: HSTM), a leading provider of learning solutions for the healthcare industry, today announced that HCA Information Technology & Services, Inc., a subsidiary of HCA, Inc., has entered into a new four-year agreement with HealthStream for enterprise-wide learning services. The agreement becomes effective October 1, 2006, and includes an optional one-year renewal following the expiration of the initial four-year term.

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HealthStream reiterates its 2006 financial expectations that include revenue growth of 13 to 15 percent over 2005 and net income that is comparable to 2005.

About HealthStream

HealthStream (NASDAQ: HSTM) is a leading provider of learning solutions for the healthcare industry. Approximately 1,377,000 contracted healthcare professionals have selected the Internet-based HealthStream Learning Center(TM), HealthStream's learning platform. The Company's learning products and services are used by healthcare organizations to meet the full range of their training needs, including training and assessment. Once subscribed to the HealthStream Learning Center(TM), customers benefit from increased compliance, reduced risks, and improved learning effectiveness. In addition, HealthStream has pioneered a new collaboration with pharmaceutical and medical device companies to assist them in product launch and market education initiatives within the Company's nationwide network of hospital customers. (www.healthstream.com)

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties regarding HealthStream. Investors are cautioned that such results or events predicted in these statements may differ materially from actual future events or results. This information has been, or in the future may be, included in reliance on the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Investors are cautioned that such results or events predicted in these statements may differ materially from actual future events or results. The Company's preliminary financial results, while presented with numerical specificity, are forward-looking statements which are based on a variety of assumptions regarding the Company's operating performance that may not be realized, and which are subject to significant uncertainties and potential contingencies associated with the Company's financial and accounting procedures and other matters referenced from time to time in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Consequently, such forward-looking information should not be regarded as a representation or warranty by the Company that such projections will be realized.

London, UK, 2 October 2006 GFI, a leading provider of network security, content security and messaging software, today announced that its board of directors approved Christopher D. Gale to serve as the companys first CFO.

Gale, 50, will move over from Clearswift Ltd., a content security software company based in the United Kingdom (UK), where he was the CFO and a member of the board of directors since 2003. During his tenure at Clearswift, Gale was responsible for the finance, legal, information technology, human resources, renewals sales and sales operations functions.

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Earlier in his career, Gale spent 12 years with Apple Computer Inc in a variety of senior financial management positions and was also part of the management team at Cooper and Chyan Technology that completed a successful IPO and subsequent trade sale for US$400m to Cadence Design Systems.

Gale has over 20 years experience in high tech, living and working not only in the UK, but also in Silicon Valley for 10 years and France for four years. He has achieved wide and diverse experience ranging from private to public and start-ups to Fortune 100 companies. Gale will be located in GFIs London office.

"Along with the Board of Directors and the GFI Executive Team, we are very pleased to have Chris join our team," says Curtis H. Staker, Chairman and CEO, GFI. "His breadth of experience and proven leadership in both public and private companies will greatly contribute to GFIs accelerating success."

Gale said, GFI is an excellent company that is poised for more success. I am looking forward to working with the company to develop its financial and operational infrastructure to help capitalize on its growth opportunities.

GFIs ability to adopt key technologies early on has led it to be a market leader. Today, GFIs award-winning solutions help its 160,000 small-to-medium and enterprise-level customers maintain robust and secure infrastructures. Earlier this year GFI launched its Global Partner Program, an enhanced channel strategy that enables its partners to better solve the IT issues of the small-to-medium-sized business (SMB) within the global marketplace, providing its partners with services typically only reserved for resellers producing volumes in line with enterprise-level deployments.

GFI is a leading software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs. With award-winning technology, an aggressive pricing strategy and a strong focus on small-to-medium sized businesses, GFI is able to satisfy the need for business continuity and productivity encountered by organizations on a global scale. Founded in 1992, GFI has offices in Malta, London, Raleigh, Hong Kong, Adelaide, Hamburg and Cyprus which support more than 160,000 installations worldwide. GFI is a channel-focused company with over 10,000 partners throughout the world. GFI is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. More information about GFI can be found at http://www.gfi.com.

SAN ANTONIO --(Business Wire)-- SecureInfo(R) Corporation, a leading provider of information security solutions, today announced the availability of the SecureInfo Certification and Accreditation Program (SI-CAP)(TM) and the opening of the company's new C&A Lab. SI-CAP encapsulates SecureInfo's C&A experience into a comprehensive C&A program designed for vendors providing information systems and networked equipment to the Federal government. By taking advantage of SI-CAP, vendors and system integrators can deliver a C&A package with their products, meeting mandated regulatory standards and saving them and the government time and money required for system implementation. The SecureInfo C&A Lab is a state-of-the-art facility designed for C&A testing and package preparation. SI-CAP can be performed in the SecureInfo C&A Lab or on-site at the vendor location.

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"With thousands of C&A packages created, SecureInfo has a proven track record in certification and accreditation for the Federal government, vendors, and system integrators," said Christopher Fountain, president and CEO of SecureInfo. "Vendors can now capitalize on this experience and provide verification that their products were tested in compliance with government security requirements--a requirement for doing business with the Federal government."

SI-CAP delivers a comprehensive C&A package and provides a thorough security evaluation in accordance with security requirements mandated by NIST SP 800-37, DIACAP/DITSCAP, and DCID. The C&A package for each product evaluated includes a comprehensive set of documentation and reports detailing the plan and results of the assessment. The package contains a plan of execution, a system security plan, a system security test and evaluation (ST&E) plan, security test and evaluation report, and a plan of actions and milestones (POA&M).

SICAP also takes advantage of SecureInfo RMS(TM), SecureInfo's compliance software that streamlines, standardizes and centralizes the C&A process. For example, SI-CAP includes C&A templates that can be easily modified and changed to meet field-specific requirements, dramatically cutting the cost and time required for product implementation.

Optional services are available for SI-CAP that address additional security sound practices beyond the NIST, DIACAP or DCID standards. SI-CAP Optional Services include a contingency plan and a configuration management plan to further support FISMA reporting requirements.

SI-CAP is available immediately. Please contact SecureInfo at http://www.secureinfo.com/Company/contact.asp or call 888-677-9351 for more information.

Certification and Accreditation Background

According to the NIST 800-37 "Guide for the Security Certification and Accreditation of Federal Information Systems," certification and accreditation guidelines were developed to help achieve more secure information systems within the federal government by:

-- Enabling more consistent, comparable, and repeatable assessments of security controls in federal information systems;

-- Promoting a better understanding of agency-related mission risks resulting from the operation of information systems; and

-- Creating more complete, reliable, and trustworthy information for authorizing officials--to facilitate more informed security accreditation decisions.

Security certification and accreditation are important activities that support a risk management process and are an integral part of an agency's information security program. Information systems software, hardware and equipment sold to Federal agencies must undergo a vendor-initiated security certification and accreditation process before the system can be implemented. The C&A process requires independent verification and validation performed by a qualified third party.

According to the Department of Defense Information Assurance Certification and Accreditation Process (DIACAP), "The DoDI 8500.2 (reference (g)) requires the evaluation of information assurance (IA) and IA-enabled IT products that are incorporated into DoD information systems. DoD information systems that are comprised of both IT products and IA or IA-enabled products shall ensure that their IA and IA-enabled products are evaluated according to DoDD 8500.1 (reference (b)), and shall be subject to the DIACAP."

About SecureInfo

SecureInfo Corporation, Inc. is a leading provider of information security solutions, including professional and managed services, and compliance and policy software products. Organizations rely on SecureInfo's solutions to achieve, sustain and measure IT compliance, protect sensitive data and critical IT assets, and mitigate risk more effectively. The company has designed, built and managed enterprise security operations centers and enterprise-wide compliance and policy solutions across Federal government agencies and commercial companies. Customers include Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, NASA, United States Air Force, US Treasury and Nortel Networks. Further information can be found at www.secureinfo.com.

SecureInfo is a registered trademark and SecureInfo RMS is a trademark of SecureInfo Corporate. All other products and brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Glovia International Inc., a subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited and leading provider of extended ERP solutions for engineer-to-order and high-volume manufacturers, today announced the introduction of Glovia Services Inc. -- a new company that is the industry's first provider of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions specifically designed to help small and midsize businesses (SMBs) manage their manufacturing processes.

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In conjunction with the launch of Glovia Services Inc., the company introduced GSInnovate, a manufacturing solution based on Glovia's successful existing manufacturing product. With its innovative delivery model, GSInnovate is a market-first. The solution supports the management of many manufacturing processes on a state-of-the-art SaaS technology platform that delivers overall business performance with minimal investment and risk.

Glovia Services Inc. is the only company that has a comprehensive SaaS solution specifically designed to help manufacturers in the SMB market manage key processes such as inventory management, order management, procurement and financial/accounting management. The GSInnovate solution is based on a SaaS delivery model in which there is no actual software, hardware or infrastructure for the SMB manufacturer to purchase or maintain. A SaaS application is accessed over the Internet with a browser, eliminating the upfront costs of hardware, licenses and expensive technical staff required to maintain these systems.

Glovia Services Inc. will focus its solutions exclusively on this growing marketplace of smaller manufacturers--a market typically underserved by traditional application solution providers. According to AMR Research, the SMB market represents a multibillion-dollar growth opportunity for enterprise technology.

"We are launching Glovia Services Inc. in response to the growing needs within the SMB manufacturing industry. In today's market, sophisticated manufacturing management applications are not easily available to smaller companies with limited internal IT resources and strict budgets. Nevertheless, to remain competitive, these manufacturers must address the same challenges as much larger firms such as global market pressures, meeting compliance mandates and demands by OEMs for supply chain processes innovations," said Randy Ehler, Glovia Services Inc's president & CEO.

GSInnovate answers these challenges with an innovative delivery model that provides users with top manufacturing management capabilities at an attractive pricing structure, along with rapid implementation capabilities and ongoing solution support. This winning combination ensures manufacturers realize maximum business benefits with a minimum investment and very low risk."

Deep Manufacturing Heritage - Innovative Technology Delivery Platform

The GSInnovate solution leverages the rich technology heritage and deep industry expertise of both Glovia International Inc. and the entire Fujitsu Group. Glovia International Inc. has a 30-year history of success in the manufacturing industry with comprehensive solutions that are used by leading manufacturing companies. Fujitsu is the world's third largest IT services company.

About Glovia Services Inc.

Glovia Services Inc. supports manufacturers in achieving their business goals by providing an integrated set of applications to address all facets of a manufacturer's business operations. The company's GSInnovate solution is the market's first comprehensive, solution that helps small and emerging manufacturing companies improve business performance. Built with 30-years of best practices in manufacturing and technology, the GSInnovate solution is cost effective, quick to implement and embeds best practices templates, resulting in a rapid return on investment and competitive advantage. For more information please visit www.gsinnovate.com, or call 310-563-8700 or 877-474-8896 (toll free).

About Glovia International

Glovia International Inc., a subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited (Tokyo Stock Exchange: 6702), is one of the world's most experienced and solidly backed providers of extended ERP solutions for businesses of any size--from small and midsized companies to global enterprises. The powerful and flexible Glovia ERP suite, glovia.com, provides for the unique needs of engineer-to-order, make-to-order, high volume and mixed-mode manufacturing environments through comprehensive, end-to-end functionality for the entire product lifecycle. Headquartered in El Segundo, California, Glovia has helped manufacturers to cut costs, improve productivity, and meet customer demands for over 30 years. For more information, please visit www.glovia.com or call (800) 223-3799.

About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is a leading provider of customer-focused IT and communications solutions for the global marketplace. Pace-setting device technologies, highly reliable computing and communications products, and a worldwide corps of systems and services experts uniquely position Fujitsu to deliver comprehensive solutions that open up infinite possibilities for its customers' success. Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of about 4.8 trillion yen (US $40.6 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com.

AUSTIN, Texas --(Business Wire)-- Perficient, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRFT), a leading information technology consulting firm serving Global 2000 and other large enterprise customers throughout the United States, today announced that it has been ranked #5 on the most recent Investor Business Daily's IBD 100(R) Top-Rated Stocks List.

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According to IBD, The IBD(R) 100 Top-Rated Stocks (formerly IBD(R) 100 SmartLink) is IBD's weekly computer-generated ranking of the leading companies in America and the highest-rated stocks available today. The IBD(R) 100 stock list features companies that show superior earnings and strong price performance. Rankings are based on a combination of each company's recent earnings growth record; IBD's Composite Rating, which includes key measures such as return on equity, sales growth and profit margins; and relative price performance in the last 12 months.

"We're excited that our performance and potential is being so highly regarded on this influential list," said Perficient chairman and chief executive Jack McDonald. "IBD has been identifying high-growth companies and important market trends for investors for more than three decades. Their recent recognition of Perficient is testament to the progress we've made and the opportunities ahead for the company, our employees, our clients and our shareholders."

Additionally, IBD's Stock Checkup(TM) has currently awarded Perficient an A+ rating, with an overall score of 98 out of a possible 100 points. Among its peer group in the Computer - Tech Services Group, Perficient is currently ranked 'Best in Group' and #1 out of 72 companies on an overall and fundamental basis.

About Perficient

Perficient is a leading information technology consulting firm serving Global 2000 and other large enterprise customers throughout the United States. Perficient helps clients gain competitive advantage by using Internet-based technologies to make their businesses more responsive to market opportunities and threats, strengthen relationships with customers, suppliers and partners, improve productivity and reduce information technology costs. Perficient is a member of the Russell 2000(R) index and is traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market(SM), a market for public companies that meet the highest listing standards in the world. Perficient is an award-winning "Premier Level" IBM business partner, a TeamTIBCO partner, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, a Documentum Select Services Team Partner and an Oracle-Siebel partner. For more information about Perficient, which employs more than 950 professionals, please visit www.perficient.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

This news release contains forward-looking statements that are subject to risk and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations and the forward-looking statements made in this press release. These risks and uncertainties include, but not limited to, the impact of competitive services, demand for services like those provided by the company and market acceptance risks, fluctuations in operating results, cyclical market pressures on the technology industry, the ability to manage strains associated with the company's growth, credit risks associated with the company's accounts receivable, the company's ability to continue to attract and retain high quality employees, accurately set fees for and timely complete its current and future client projects, the company's ability to identify, compete for and complete strategic acquisition and partnership opportunities, and other risks detailed from time to time in the company's filings with Securities and Exchange Commission, including the most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q.

Austin, Texas-based Zilliant, a vendor of data-driven price management software for business-to-business companies, has announced the general release of the Zilliant Precision Pricing Suite version 6.0, of the company's pricing software.

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Company officials say ZPPS 6.0 provides "significant enhancements across all pricing applications including ZPPS Optimization, Price Manager, Deal Manager and Analytics."

Greg Peters, CEO, Zilliant said that in addition to increased product functionality and platform support, ZPPS 6.0 also "improves usability making it easier than ever for pricing stakeholders to make smarter, data-driven pricing decisions."

Such products are getting more popular in the CRM world. "Through 2009, price optimization technology will have the greatest impact on improving the top line revenue and profitability of any business application," says Rob DeSisto, Vice President of CRM at Gartner (News - Alert). "The results of organizations implementing pricing optimization have been significant. Margin uplifts of 10% and profit enhancements of 15% or more have been the norm rather than the exception."

This May Zilliant announced that Zilliant Precision Pricing Suite 5.4 completed formal integration certification testing with SAP (News - Alert) NetWeaver.

Following the release of Zilliant’s Price Integration Framework, which provides connectivity between ZPPS 5.4 and enterprise order management applications, the “Powered by SAP NetWeaver” qualification was part of Zilliant’s strategy of integrating its science-based price setting and execution applications with mySAP ERP, mySAP Customer Relationship management (mySAP CRM), and SAP applications, company officials said at the time.

Eric Hills, Zilliant’s vice president of marketing explained at the time that the customer, order, and product data at the heart of SAP’s applications “allows ZPPS to engineer precise price recommendations for every sales transaction across all channels.”

ZPPS 6.0 enhancements improved graphical user interface enhances visibility to the market dynamics and business rules driving price recommendations, decision support capabilities that allow companies to assess the impact of cost, price and discount changes on future financial performance, capabilities to manage and analyze complex price agreements as well as usability improvements including comparative impact summaries and scenario development and new subscription-based capabilities for access to relevant pricing information and insights.

ZPPS 6.0 enhancements reflect Zilliant’s "continued emphasis on science-based capabilities, specifically ZPPS Optimization, because of their proven returns," officials explain.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims’ columnist page.

REDWOOD SHORES, Calif. --(Business Wire)-- Above All(R) Software, a provider of award-winning business integration software, today announced that the company will have a significant presence at Dreamforce '06, salesforce.com's (NYSE:CRM) user and developer conference, to help educate salesforce.com customers of the benefits of composite applications and enterprise mashups.

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On Monday, October 9 at 11:30 am, Above All Vice President of Products, Deborah Scharfetter, will be speaking on a panel titled "Integration Strategies in a SaaS Environment" led by Cindy Warner, Senior Vice President, Global Integration Services for salesforce.com. The session is intended to help salesforce.com customers understand how to develop a predictable, reusable, and scalable integration strategy for their enterprise.

Above All composite applications have been deployed at numerous salesforce.com customers. These customers have used the Above All Composite Application Platform(TM) to extend Salesforce functionality and integrate with a variety of back office solutions, thereby enabling sales and support personnel to be even more effective and efficient. Representatives of several of these companies will be attending Dreamforce '06, including Intrep, Bell Canada, CSA, Mitchell International, and PGP.

In addition, Above All and salesforce.com are co-sponsoring a "Dreamforce Mashup Party" at the DNA Lounge at 375 11th St, San Francisco on Tuesday, October 10 at 8pm for all Dreamforce attendees, especially members of the AppExchange Developer Network.

At the Dreamforce conference, Above All will be exhibiting in Booth #411.

About AppExchange Developer Network

AppExchange Developer Network (http://developer.appexchange.com) provides the community, tools and resources to let developers build new applications for the AppExchange. Now any developer in the world -- with access to just a Web browser and Internet connection -- can harness the power of the world's most popular multi-tenant platform to create new applications and mashups from scratch. With toolkits and resources for most popular development languages, including AJAX, Java, .NET and PHP, developers can also combine those applications with other Internet services to create new business mashups, allowing developers, ISVs and IT organizations to easily leverage The Business Web in their projects and offerings.

Developers interested in using the toolkits and the AppExchange on-demand platform available can sign up for a free Developer Edition at http://developer.appexchange.com.

About Above All Software

Above All Software provides award-winning software for rapid composite application assembly and delivery, enabling companies to leverage a service-oriented architecture to meet changing business needs. This new, flexible service-level approach simplifies and reduces the cost of business integration. Above All's customers include Bell Canada, CSA, Hilton, Medtronic, and NASDAQ. Above All has alliances with some of the leading names in software, including Good Technology, Microsoft, salesforce.com, Siebel Systems/Oracle, and Systinet/HP. Headquartered in Redwood Shores, CA, Above All is privately held. For more information about Above All, visit our Web site at www.aboveallsoftware.com or call 800-819-5530.

NOTE: Above All is a registered trademark of Above All Software in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

--(Business Wire)-- Rogue Wave Software:

Who:    Patrick Leonard, Vice President Product Development, Rogue
      Wave Software.
      Leonard will be joined by Khalid Monsour, Vice President
      Enterprise Integration, CIBER, and Henry Truong, Chief
      Technology Officer, Teletech Holdings.
What:    In this workshop, participants will be exposed to
      real-world examples of the obstacles encountered in
      migrating to a SOA-based environment, as well as
      successful tools and techniques to achieve the
      scalability, throughput and interoperability required for
      success. Over the next several years, the volume of data
      and processing requirements in many organizations is
      expected to grow dramatically. This workshop will allow
      for participants to interact in a panel discussion on
      understanding how SOA fits in to this growing trend and
      how their company should prepare and respond to it.
When:    Thursday, October 5, 2006
      Networking:           4:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m.
      Workshop:            4:30 p.m. - 5:15 p.m.
      Networking and Refreshments:  5:15 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Where:   Denver Software Club
      Denver Tech Center
Contact:  For more information about the event please visit the
      Denver Software Club's website at
      
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