Progress SonicMQ Winning Worldwide Acceptance; New Customers Adopt Award-Winning Internet E-Commerce Messaging Technology in Record Numbers

Business Wire, Sept 5, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

BEDFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 5, 2000

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a leading supplier of application development, deployment and management products and services today announced that only six months after introduction in Europe, its award-winning Progress(R) SonicMQ(TM) Internet messaging server technology is gaining record acceptance among leading e-commerce infrastructure companies.

As the first standalone-messaging server based on the Java Message Service (JMS) specification from a major software vendor, SonicMQ provides the speed, robustness and flexibility essential for scalable performance for business-to-business e-commerce.

A major announcement regarding SonicMQ will be featured at the Progress European users conference, "Progress Software Exchange 2000," to be held September 10 - 13 in Barcelona, Spain. At Exchange, SonicMQ customers will talk with the press about the applications they are deploying using SonicMQ. The conference will be held at the Catalonia Palace of Congresses and will include product exhibitions in addition to in-depth presentations of new and yet-to-be released technology.

"SonicMQ enabled us to complete a feature-rich and highly reliable interactive electronic trading platform in one-quarter to one-third the time it would have taken us with other methods," said Patrick McGrath, Director of Global Development at Prebon Yamane, a leading worldwide institutional broker. "The ease of use of SonicMQ and the ability to readily integrate it with legacy systems allowed us to concentrate on making the new trading platform state-of-the-art."

"SonicMQ offers customers a Java-based messaging alternative to the more expensive, traditional, complex, resource-intensive Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM)," said Steve Garone, Program Vice President for Enterprise Integration Software at IDC. "Progress cites acceptance of SonicMQ by a broad range of companies around the world for their B2B initiatives. This illustrates the need for the Internet-friendly messaging technology that SonicMQ provides."

"SonicMQ gives developers a way to quickly meet the massive scalability requirements essential for e-business," said Paul MacKay, vice president, sales and marketing, Internet products at Progress Software. "European companies developing online auctions and exchanges, complex supply-chain integration and wireless applications recognize they need an Internet application messaging solution that is broad-based and immediate. Therefore, these customers have made SonicMQ their premier choice."

European-based customers who have adopted SonicMQ include:

Software Industry:

-- BCP Ltd. - United Kingdom - suppliers of powerful, modern software systems for retail and wholesale distribution and property management, using SonicMQ to exchange data via XML - www.bcpltd.co.uk/

-- Bibit Billing Services - The Netherlands - a large provider of e-commerce payment and invoicing services with operations in Europe and the United States; the initial role for SonicMQ is payment status messaging to and from the merchants - www.bibit.com

-- Casnet International - The Netherlands - dedicated to providing special application development for the Internet, uses SonicMQ to support back-end integration through their product called JetMQ - www.casnet.nl

-- EDB Dolphin - Norway - leading provider of call center software solutions throughout Scandinavia; will launch a new Java-based call center solution - www.dolphin.no

-- IONA Technologies - United Kingdom - IONA, a leading provider of e-business infrastructure helping organizations build and deploy portals, Internet commerce sites, and other large-scale distributed applications, will integrate SonicMQ into IONA's iPortal Application Server, allowing the development of a new class of highly distributed, Internet-centric applications for B2B e-commerce - www.iona.com

-- Phenix Engineering - France - a leading French provider of Electronic Document Processing software and systems integrator; will develop a workflow solution embedded in its software package. - www.phenix.fr

-- Westland Systems - United Kingdom - a large application service provider (ASP) geared toward delivering greater efficiency for accounting, human resource management, distribution and supply chain management, has embedded SonicMQ into its automated supply chain management system, OpenLogistix - www.westlandsystems.co.uk/

Others :

-- Academic Medical Centre (AMC) - The Netherlands - a combination of an academic hospital and the medical faculty of the University of Amsterdam; implementing SonicMQ as a means to integrate existing systems and communicate with other hospitals - www.amc.uva.nl

-- Czech Insurance - Czech Republic - the largest insurance company in the Czech Republic, with about 50% market share, 700 selling points, and offices in London and Moscow, will use SonicMQ for EAI (back and front office applications) with Progress 4GL, SAP/R3 ISISCD module and C applications - www.cpoj.cz