Sterling Commerce Positioned in the 'Visionary' Quadrant for the Warehouse Management Systems Magic Quadrant in 2006

Business Wire, April 3, 2006

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Sterling Commerce, the multi-enterprise collaboration company and AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T) subsidiary, announced today it was positioned in the "Visionary" quadrant of Gartner's Warehouse Management Systems 2006 Magic Quadrant(1).

According to Gartner, "Vendors in the visionary quadrant must have a coherent and compelling strategy that seeks to deliver a robust and vibrant product to the market. Additionally, the visionaries must be anticipating user requirements across all areas of a business process platform (BPP) strategy, WMS/TMS consolidation, and a chaos-tolerant supply chain strategy."

"We consider our placement in this report as important in positioning Sterling Commerce as a vendor to watch in the WMS arena, with a unique and compelling vision for a differentiated offering," said Devdutt Yellurkar, chief strategy officer for Sterling Commerce. "But, more importantly, we believe it confirms the efforts we've made to provide forward-thinking solutions that enable our customers to adapt to ever-changing business demands."

The report continued, "The most-aggressive supply chain practitioners are beginning to shift their focus from lean- and demand-driven supply chain principles to what some have called 'post-lean' supply chain principles, or what Gartner calls 'chaos-tolerant' processes. Gartner believes this represents the frontier for supply chain excellence, and WMS vendors will begin to support these strategies and process requirements with functionality."

With its service-oriented architecture and process-centric modeling capabilities, Sterling Networked Warehouse Management solution (nWMS) delivers unprecedented supply chain management process agility. It is highly adaptable, enabling rapid process change that ensures consistency across a multi-site warehouse operation, while providing for facility-specific configuration. Sterling nWMS provides a central point of control over complex warehouse operations, across multiple facilities of varying types, in support for chaos-tolerant processes. Its support for radio frequency (RFID) and materials handling integration, and robust planning, execution and measurement tools for distribution managers brings operational discipline to complex warehouse operations. The technology underpinnings of Sterling nWMS support the company's multi-enterprise collaboration strategy to deliver solutions that enable companies to gain improved visibility and efficiency between trusted business partners.

About the Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2006, by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, a subsidiary of AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), has more than 30 years of leadership and expertise in extending processes beyond the edge of the enterprise to enable visible business with suppliers, customers, partners and employees. With more than 29,000 customers worldwide, the company is one of the world's largest providers of multi-enterprise collaboration solutions. Sterling Commerce builds collaborative, multi-enterprise communities for customers in the retail, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare and telecommunications industries. For detailed, up-to-date information about Sterling Commerce and its solutions, visit www.sterlingcommerce.com.

(1) Gartner, Inc., "Magic Quadrant for Warehouse Management Systems, 2006," by Jeff Woods and Tim Payne, 30 February 2006.