SBC's Sterling Commerce to Deliver Open Standards-Based E-Business Integration Software Platform

Business Wire, August 20, 2001

Business Editors

COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 20, 2001

STERLING Integrator Addresses Internal and External Integration

Needs Via Native J2EE-Based Platform

Product Designed to Simplify IT Demands and Create Flexible Foundation

For Growth and Fast Adoption of New E-Business Technologies

SBC Communications Inc. (NYSE:SBC), through its subsidiary Sterling Commerce, today announced STERLING Integrator, an advanced e-business integration platform designed to alleviate IT headaches and establish a solid foundation for more complete, responsive e-business processes.

STERLING Integrator is the industry's first native Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) integration platform to consolidate both enterprise application (EAI) and business-to-business (B2B) integration capabilities. Through a single software platform, STERLING Integrator provides Global 5000 companies with internal application integration as well as support for real-time and file-based business-to-business interactions, creating a complete, streamlined foundation for businesses to coordinate, automate, and manage e-business processes.

This unique architecture delivers two significant benefits in comparison to competitive offerings: it addresses today's integration needs while simplifying the migration path to new standards and technologies, and it is designed to reduce scarce IT resources needed to maintain and expand e-business infrastructure.

"Integration at the process level is essential for organizations looking to tap into the full potential of e-business, but achieving it can be a daunting challenge," said Sam Starr, Sterling Commerce chief delivery officer. "With the proliferation of enterprise software and limited first-generation middleware, companies find themselves with integration spaghetti - an infrastructure that not only is difficult to maintain and grow, but one that cannot deliver the responsiveness and efficiency of e-business. STERLING Integrator is designed to alleviate this IT nightmare and provide an open, flexible foundation for e- business expansion and evolution.

"At the same time, STERLING Integrator's open-standards framework approach and the company's more than 25 years of experience provides businesses with the dual assurance that they're investing in a strategic solution that is designed to meet their needs today as well as in the future - and one that is delivered by an industry and technology leader that will be there in the future to help them expand and grow," Starr said.

Open-Standard Architecture Facilitates Future Growth, Expansion

STERLING Integrator employs a state-of-the-art services-oriented architecture, leveraging the J2EE Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) component model. This provides organizations with unmatched flexibility to incorporate existing and future interoperability technology standards, such as EDI, Web Services, ebXML, BPML and emerging XML-based security and quality of service specifications. Additionally, the product marries native XML and EDI translation capabilities, enabling large organizations with extensive EDI assets to safely evolve to emerging Internet-based process integration.

Sterling Commerce today plays a leading role in industry working groups responsible for evolving key standards, including EDI, ebXML, XML, and BPML. STERLING Integrator's flexible design, backed by the company's depth of knowledge on these industry-wide standards, ensures that customers will quickly and easily be able to adopt new and updated technology as it is tested and proven.

"Businesses want and need the efficiencies of e-business right now, but they can't afford to invest in technology that relies on a proprietary architecture that might be outdated in a year or two - or worse, a vendor that might not be around," Starr said. "Sterling Commerce is heavily involved in guiding the development and evolution of e-business standards and protocols, and we have designed STERLING Integrator to easily evolve and develop right along with them, making it easier for businesses to adopt new integration technologies and styles."

STERLING Integrator is also designed to support a wide range of application and technology adapters, including support for popular packages such as SAP, PeopleSoft, I2, and Siebel, and messaging middleware such as IBM MQSeries, Oracle AQ, and the Java Messaging Service (JMS). Custom adapter support also is supported through an adapter development kit.

Single Architecture Simplifies IT Demands and Technology

Deployment

STERLING Integrator is designed to address entire business processes, incorporating both enterprise applications and business-to- business networks and marketplaces in a single, unified management and execution platform. Competitors' first-generation integration suites claim similar functionality, but generally consist of bundles of separate products, requiring users to learn and maintain multiple user interfaces and deployment environments.

STERLING Integrator's unified architecture gives organizations a consistent, single integration platform to deploy simple or complex integration scenarios. This will result in a more streamlined integration solution that requires fewer IT resources, while enabling IT employees to more rapidly respond to e-business demands from corporate end-users, customers, and partners.