The SCC underwent an extensive review process to select a product that will be used to maintain the Model as an object-oriented database. Historically, the SCC has kept the core model in Microsoft Word and PowerPoint format to ensure that all SCC members could access the Model without relying on specialized or proprietary software. As the SCC has grown in membership and the Model has been translated into multiple mediums and languages, the SCC recognized that publishing multiple renditions of the Model from a single core database would substantially reduce the administrative cost of managing the Model, shorten Model development cycle times, and provide practitioners with more robust (and friendly) SCOR-based tools.

Proforma Corporation’s ProVision enterprise modeling suite has been selected as the software tool that the SCC staff will use to maintain and publish the Model. Proforma will partner with the SCC to convert the SCOR -Model into an object-oriented relational database and assist the Council in developing internal capabilities to maintain, manage, and develop SCOR and future models, such as the DCOR Model now under development by an international project team. Other process modeling software providers have been invited and agreed to participate in the project and ensure that the Model can be ported easily into any software tool.

The Supply-Chain Council is a global, not-for-profit trade association open to all types of organizations. It sponsors and supports educational programs including conferences, retreats, benchmarking studies, and development of the SCOR-model. The Council is dedicated to improving the supply chain efficiency of its practitioner members.

The Supply-Chain Council members include Fortune 500 companies and SMEs (small to medium enterprises) from industries worldwide, consulting firms, computer systems and solutions providers, and educational institutions.

SCOR is a process reference model that allows companies to transform their supply chains by mapping their supply chain processes, determining where weak links exist, employing best practices, and measuring performance against industry benchmarks. Consisting of several increasingly detailed layers, SCOR allows companies to examine their supply chain processes and their relationships between partners, suppliers and customers. Companies using SCOR have seen dramatic ROI and savings due to increased supply chain efficiency.

For more information on the Supply-Chain Council, its members and activities, please call +1.202.962.0440: +1.202.962.3939 (fax) or e-mail at info@supply-chain.org. Please visit the SCC website at www.supply-chain.org.

To learn more about Proforma and the ProVision modeling suite, individuals can call +1.248.356.9775, write to info@proformacorp.com or visit www.proformacorp.com.

In its fall 2004 Enterprise Integration Software Industry Spotlight, BCF provides a deep investigation into the current market dynamics of the BPM, Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Enterprise Data Integration (EDI) software sectors. The results of the company’s evaluation reinforce that Ultimus has firmly established its position as a leader in the BPM market.

“We believe that Ultimus will be one of the few survivors in a highly fragmented, increasingly competitive BPM industry,” the report states. “Ultimus’ strategy to date has been to focus its efforts on improving the underlying processes that are fundamental to a business.”

According to BCF, which tracks more than 50 vendors in the BPM, EAI and EDI sectors,” only a few BPM providers will flourish in the hyper-competitive, highly fragmented space. In its report, BCF predicts Ultimus is one such company – echoing sentiment first aired by CEO Rashid Khan some 10 years ago when Ultimus was founded.

The report states, “while most of the pure-play BPM vendors have raised tens of millions of dollars to build what they claim to be the most robust, scalable technologies and create marketing hype, Ultimus has developed an equally scalable platform while maintaining a razor sharp focus on the end goal – improving the way work gets done.” Ultimus continues to expand its leadership position in BPM on the strength of its Adaptive Discovery™ technology, a revolutionary new approach to business process management. Experts agree that one of the most challenging aspects of business process management is defining the process and its associated rules. Adaptive Discovery enables organizations to deploy automated processes without complete maps, while process experts can define flow and manage exceptions on the fly.

BCF is a well-known private investment banking firm which provides expertise on a broad range of financial disciplines to assist corporations in achieving their most critical strategic and financial objectives. The report was conducted independently and is being viewed as a barometer of the BPM industry by organizations and analysts alike.

In the report, BCF added, “Adaptive Discovery provides an alternative to complicated enterprise process mapping, which often times can delay or even kill a BPM implementation. We believe that Adaptive Discovery will be a key differentiator for the company as it provides the flexibility and agility that BPM systems must have to simplify the process design lifecycle, shorten implementation cycles and, most importantly, shorten time to value.”

“Ultimus differentiates itself by providing BPM solutions with the fastest time to value, because our approach allows customers to identify the basics of business processes, then use technology to improve and optimize them,” said Rashid Khan, CEO and co-founder of Ultimus. “Our positioning as a market leader by Boston Corporate Finance and tier-one analyst firms confirms that our strategy is right on.”

Industry Spotlight reports are complimentary for BCF clients, Enterprise Integration Software industry participants, and the venture capital community. To receive a copy, please contact Craig Gibson at cgibson@bostoncf.com or at 781-320-3200 x 204.

About Boston Corporate Finance

Headquartered in Westwood, Mass., Boston Corporate Finance, Inc. is a private investment banking firm focused on providing traditional investment banking advisory services to high growth companies primarily in the technology sector. BCF’s senior professionals have both global, as well as regional investment banking experience with firms including KPMG Corporate Finance and Advest, Inc. Additional company information can be obtained on the World Wide Web at www.bostoncf.com or by calling 781-320-3200.

More information about Ultimus can be obtained by visiting the Ultimus Web site at http://www.ultimus.com, emailing info@ultimus.com, or by calling 919-678-0900.

The newest version of System Architect will offer integrated support for BPEL, giving System Architect users a complete business process management support solution, from developing business process models through to the generation of code for the execution of business processes. By providing executable code, process models can be more easily integrated into a wide variety of third-party tools that support Web services, enterprise application integration (EAI) and business process management.

In addition, Popkin announced integration of models developed using the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) with its SA simulator, giving users an automated method for analyzing and predicting the true costs of a transaction or process and the impact of changes to the process on resources. Popkin made the announcement at the DCI Meta Business Process Management conference in Boston today.

“System Architect now offers a complete solution for business process modeling through implementation,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “Popkin has made a major step forward in enabling technology that supports the interchange of information required by Web services. Our solution offers complete support, from the initial development of business process models through to BPEL code execution that supports Web services and enterprise integration. Popkin Software continues to be at the forefront of tool support for business process integration, an emerging trend in IT.”

Today, integrating various enterprise applications can be a difficult challenge, requiring resources well beyond the capabilities of many companies. BPEL is the first step toward linking processes within applications instead of directly tying the applications together. By focusing on process integration, companies can ignore unnecessary functionality and eliminate many of the steps involved in complete integration.

Architects and business analysts use System Architect and the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), the new modeling standard, to map out business processes. BPEL enables programmers to formally describe processes underlying business applications so that they can be linked to processes in other applications. This is the first step in the evolution toward Web services and the adoption of modular, loosely coupled application development or service-oriented architectures.

Separately, Popkin also announced integration of BPMN-based models with its SA simulator, giving System Architect users a more powerful decision support tool. The new feature enables users to quickly analyze and predict the cost, resources and time associated with a process. For example, by building a model of a process in BPMN or another business process language, and entering cost and resource information, users can visually see an accurate reflection of the true cost of a process or transaction and the impact of changes to the process on resources.

“The generation of this information gives companies a much more accurate prediction of the time and cost of transactions,” said Popkin. “This new feature offers companies, for the first time, access to the detailed cost information associated with services. Companies can now look dynamically at a process, such as processing a purchase order or a loan, and gain an accurate assessment of all the costs and resources associated with delivery of their services.”

BPEL and SA simulator support will be available in the newest version of System Architect (v10), which will be commercially available in mid-July. System Architect is the only tool to integrate, in one multi-user product, industry-leading support for all major modeling and enterprise architecture standards using a SQL server platform. For more information, visit www.popkin.com.

The company will use the additional investment to expand its sales, marketing and customer services functions to meet customer demand, as well as to expand into important international BPM markets within the next year. Fuego is a profitable venture, and has added over 50 new enterprise customers so far this year, growing revenues by more than 100 percent. Fuego’s last investment round was attained in October 2001.

“We’ve always known that the FuegoBPM product was technologically superior,” said Noel Fenton, General Partner at Trinity Ventures, a Fuego investor. “The execution of the management team has been outstanding – the company has grown well beyond our expectations this year, and we are very excited about its future.”

During the past year, the company and product has received numerous accolades, including BPM Solution of The Year from Business Integration Journal, Best Process Optimization BPM Vendor by BPM Today, as well as very favorable product reviews from leading industry analyst firms such as Gartner, META Group, Forrester Research, IDC, Butler Group, and others. The company recently released FuegoBPM version 5.5, again setting the bar for BPM software with features such as multi-process simulation/optimization and monitoring, point-and-click BAM, wizard driven rules creation and much more.

In addition to Trinity Ventures, based in Menlo Park, Calif., Sevin Rosen Funds, Stephens Group, SSM Ventures, and Star Ventures also participated in the $5.0 million investment in Fuego.

“We are thrilled with the continued insight and support that our distinguished board of directors and investors are providing to the company,” said Jon Lauck, Fuego President and CEO. “Their guidance has helped propel the business and I am very excited to work with them as we take the business to the next level.”

About Trinity Ventures

Founded in 1986, Trinity Ventures is a value-added investor that provides capital, networks and resources to early-stage software, services, communications and networked systems companies. With more than $1 billion under management, Trinity Ventures has a proven track record of working in close collaboration with entrepreneurs to build leading companies, such as Extreme Networks, Network Alchemy, Crescendo Communications, Forte Software, Illustra and Starbucks. For more information on Trinity Ventures, please visit www.trinityventures.com. For more information, contact Fuego at 972-801-4200, or visit http://www.fuego.com.

BRMS are essential components of the enterprise architecture since they address the challenges created by faster business cycles and aging software architectures that can't accommodate change quickly enough. By allowing business users - and not just IT staff - to modify the IT infrastructure in real-time, as business conditions and strategies change, these tools have become essential to achieve business agility across the enterprise.

"The .NET community has been looking forward to the arrival of ILOG's business rules solution on its preferred platform," said Eric Groise, chief technology officer, OCTO Technology. "Now architects and developers will benefit from tools seamlessly integrated into Visual Studio .NET and can add business rules to their .NET based applications. Business users can now author and edit business rules within Microsoft Office and Windows SharePoint. The learning curve is short and the key features that made ILOG JRules a popular product are perfectly adapted to the .NET platform." ILOG Rules for .NET product incorporates all the tools needed to manage business rules across their lifecycle for mission-critical applications, including:

* ILOG Rule Solutions for Office. This feature allows policy managers and business users to author and modify business rules using the world's most mainstream productivity tool - Microsoft Office. By incorporating a point and click editor that uses a business rule language with a natural language syntax, users are able to increase productivity and reduce the learning curve in writing business rules. * ILOG Rule Studio for .NET. This set of plug-ins for Visual Studio® .NET allows developers to author, test, and deploy business rules using a familiar Integrated Development Environment (IDE), and gives them -- for the first time - the opportunity to develop business rule applications using the programming languages with which they are most familiar - whether its C#, VB.NET or C++. The built-in integration with 3rd party source code control tools applies software development "best practices" to rule application development.

* ILOG Rule Team Server for SharePoint. Built on top of Windows SharePoint Services, it serves as the single place for sharing and collaboration of business rules with policy managers and business people, and leverages features such as document and meeting workspaces, user presence, discussion boards, tasks and alerts. ILOG's rules repository system integrates with SharePoint to facilitate a central storage for all the business rules used collaboratively across an organization, ensuring consistency, facilitating access and sharing, while constantly managing business rules as corporate asset.

* ILOG Rule Engine for .NET - The heart of the ILOG Rules .NET product is equipped with a native .NET rule engine that has high performance and scalability and at the same time allows for seamless integration with any .NET application independent of architecture and programming languages used.

ILOG is a Microsoft Certified Partner and the first business rule technology vendor to be a part of Microsoft's Visual Studio Industry Partner (VSIP) program which provides ILOG with deep technical and marketing resources for its products developed for Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET. ILOG has consistently built on its history of product innovation to make ILOG's BRMS the industry's leading business rule software. For the second year in a row, ILOG was named to the leader quadrant of Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Business Rule Engines. ILOG's BRMS can provide a competitive advantage for many strategic business applications. Compliance solutions powered by ILOG's BRMS monitor high volumes of data in real time, helping to enable the immediate detection and reporting of faulty or fraudulent information. Customers of the award-winning ILOG BRMS include CitiStreet, VSP, eBay, Zurich, MetLife, Sabre and many other leading Global 2000 companies and governments worldwide.

ILOG Rules for .NET is available on Dec. 3. For more information, please visit <http://rulesfordotnet.ilog.com/>

ARIS Value Engineering encapsulates IDS Scheer's many years of process knowledge, experience and solutions into a consistent, best practices BPM methodology that consultants can use in the field. This methodology reflects the evolution and next generation BPM techniques and integrates them into a process roadmap for continued success.

"This dynamic methodology provides our consultants with a repository of BPM knowledge that can be instantly accessed and utilized for our global customers based on the continuum of services and solutions we have pioneered in the marketplace," said Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, CEO, IDS Scheer North America. "In addition, ARIS Value Engineering provides our consultants with a methodology to ensure the highest levels of consistency and quality in the deliverables they give to our customers." For more information on IDS Scheer North America, visit http://www.ids-scheer.com/us.

ARIS Scout Factory provides IDS Scheer customers with a replicable procedure for creating a methodology. Customers can model these procedures in ARIS and use the ARIS Scout Factory to generate a custom scout specific to their organizations. Using ARIS to build a procedure, customers can link templates from other applications and transform this into a HTML-based tool or Scout.

"Previously, customers were locked into only selecting one of our pre-built Scouts such as quality or risk management," said Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, CEO, IDS Scheer North America. "Now, ARIS Scout Factory enables our customers to generate custom scouts specifically aligned with their individual needs and business requirements."

According to Dr. Kirchmer, ARIS Scout Factory serves as a custom methodology builder and creates consistency for customers to model a specific procedure and includes all the necessary, templates, techniques and tools at their fingertips. "There is no need to reinvent the wheel," he added. "Plus, this empowers our customers to integrate consistency and quality into their process deliverables."

IDS Scheer is a leading provider of solutions for business process excellence. The company_s ARIS-based solutions offer a complete portfolio for "Business Process Excellence," including the services, software and methods to address all phases of the business process lifecycle: design, implementation, execution and continuous improvement. From small/medium enterprises to Global 1000 organizations, IDS Scheer provides a wide array of solutions to help customers optimize, and profit from, their investments in Supply Chain Management (SCM), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Next Generation Business Process Automation solutions. As a SAP Global Services Partner, IDS Scheer enables customers to maximize their SAP investment and build winning businesses. As part of an organization of more than 2000 employees worldwide and over 250 in North America, IDS Scheer is built upon a foundation of business process excellence that began when the company was founded in 1984 by August-Wilhelm Scheer, widely recognized as a founding father of Business Process Management.

For more information on IDS Scheer North America, visit http://www.ids-scheer.com/us.

FuegoBPM release 5.5 continues to demonstrate the company’s BPM industry leadership and commitment to process excellence by providing business-users with those managerial capabilities crucial to the support of large-scale, standards-based BPM deployments. FuegoBPM 5.5 significantly expands upon the robust process modeling, simulation, analysis and measurement and business activity monitoring (BAM) functionality available in previous versions of the software. Influenced by input from Fuego’s major customers as well as trends in the BPM market over the past twelve months, FuegoBPM 5.5 once again sets the industry bar for standards-based BPM deployments.

As a BPM pioneer, Fuego was the first vendor to offer a completely integrated BPM product encompassing the full range of functions required by both business and IT users to automate, manage and optimize their enterprise-scale business processes. Fuego continues to lead the industry with innovations that are only now becoming commonplace across other vendor toolsets. For example, Fuego was the first BPM vendor to offer a shared model approach to BPM process design and development, the first to deliver its software using multi-platform Java and internet-based standards (J2EE, XML, XPATH, Web services, etc.), the first to fully support Web services (including using Web services in support of a BPM process as well as exposing BPM processes as web services) and to provide a complete set of functionality to automatically generate integration to existing applications, portals, databases, and messaging infrastructures (“Integrated IntegrationSM”).

Major Capabilities of FuegoBPM release 5.5

FuegoBPM has added numerous features and enhancements targeted towards Business Analysts involved in designing and optimizing business processes. Some of the major business-oriented features include:

FuegoBPM Designer – FuegoBPM 5.5 introduces a stand-alone modeling module – FuegoBPM Designer – targeted at business users for the creation of simple and complex business process models using industry standard notations. Business users of the FuegoBPM Designer can easily model processes, define the appropriate business rules and Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) they wish to measure and then simulate them to gauge performance. The resultant models can immediately be made executable through the FuegoBPM Studio development and testing module.

Process Dashboards – Building upon the success of prior releases, FuegoBPM 5.5 significantly enhances its measurement, analytics and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities. New process dashboards and Wizard-driven BAM enables business analysts to easily create and monitor process-specific metrics in real-time. This is crucial to those processes supporting Service Level Agreements. FuegoBPM’s BAM features include the ability to “drill down” to specific work items anywhere in the process and take pre-emptive corrective action before a work item has become a problem. The Process Dashboard also supports the ability for process managers to modify the behavior of the process without involving the IT department.

Multi-process simulation –Process simulation in FuegoBPM has been enhanced to support multi-process simulation. Multi-process simulation helps Business Analysts and process designers understand the effects of resource contention when process participants and/or systems are involved in multiple processes. The key to successful continuous process improvement is the understanding of how “all” processes are behaving together and how best to allocate resources (human and system) to best meet the work demand.

FuegoBPM continues to raise the bar on the technical side of the equation as well. Understanding the importance of delivering deep functionality for the IT department is the ultimate test of BPM vendors. Some of the major technical features include:

Expanded Integration Capabilities - Fuego continues to dominate this critical area of BPM by expanding its “Integrated Integration” capabilities to include native integration for Microsoft’s .Net features. Fuego expanded functionality delivers introspection for .NET Assemblies to enable point and click creation of .Net components. Since many of Fuego clients are running their BPM solutions in Microsoft-only environments, the ability to offer the same level of wizard-driven integration for .Net was imperative as their architecture evolves.

Open Architecture – Fuego has drastically expanded the product architecture, enabling software and other Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) vendors to easily embed the FuegoBPM product within their respective solutions.

Client Requested Functionality - FuegoBPM 5.5 incorporates many customer recommended features to better support their rapid process development initiatives. Tools have been added to enable easier process debugging and problem diagnostics, collaborative development efforts and expanded version control system support.

“Analysts and customers agree that the FuegoBPM product is a leader in the BPM industry. Our rapid growth, customer successes and competitive wins prove that the Fuego technology is innovative and rock solid,” said Jon Lauck, Fuego CEO. “We are proud that once again Fuego has delivered breakthrough BPM capabilities that enterprise customers need in their quest for process excellence.”

For more information, contact Fuego at 972-801-4200, or visit http://www.fuego.com.

Through the partnership, Metastorm will embed the iGrafx® Process(tm) software into its e-Work BPM software suite to deliver advanced modeling and simulation capabilities to its 700+ and growing global customer base. Metastorm will embed the iGrafx technology directly into its new modeling and simulation solution - called e-Work Envision(tm). e- Work Envision will provide customers with powerful forecasting and predictive analysis capabilities that will allow users to both model new processes as well as simulate the impact of changes to existing processes.

This announcement further establishes iGrafx as a leader in the development and delivery of powerful, easy to use solutions for process analysis and modeling. iGrafx solutions are used by thousands of companies for key process initiatives such as Six Sigma, Lean, TQM, ISO and Sarbanes-Oxley.

Jim Sinur, Distinguished Analyst from Gartner notes: "Business Process Analysis (BPA) technologies really help business professionals optimize their business processes. Visualizing the business process goes a long way toward identifying bottlenecks, value streams, administrative tasks to automate and opportunities for reducing error cycles. The resulting models can be used as universal communication tools for business users, systems integrators (SIs), developers and outsourcers. Business Process Management (BPM) technologies allow for the translation of the business models completed in BPA tools into reality while keeping them sharp through continuous feed back and inline optimization. BPA and BPM are extremely complimentary technologies and will help clients leverage business processes."

"We are very pleased that Metastorm has selected iGrafx as their partner for Business Process Analysis," said Ken Carraher, president, iGrafx. "The addition of the iGrafx BPA capabilities will help Metastorm complete their vision of "roundtrip" BPM and we are happy to be a part of that solution. This partnership also further establishes iGrafx as a leader in helping companies achieve process excellence and is great news for our customers with vast libraries of existing process maps who can now easily leverage Metastorm's BPM suite to automate, manage, and control these critical processes."

"Our customers are looking for new ways to further increase their return on investment from Metastorm e-Work. We evaluated many other BPA tools and selected iGrafx as a best-of-breed solution that will help us deliver unsurpassed business process analysis capabilities," said Robert Farrell, president and chief executive officer, Metastorm. "iGrafx has the vision and the people to ensure our combined technologies continue to deliver market leading capabilities as the BPM market evolves."

Website: http://www.igrafx.com

Website: http://www.metastorm.com

Available today for mySAP™ Business Suite applications, Intalio|APEX lets organizations quickly and cost-effectively consolidate multiple instances of mySAP.com®, integrate new mySAP.com modules or upgrade to mySAP.com or SAP R/3® 4.7. Built on top of Intalio|n3 ™ 3.0, the newest version of its trailblazing Business Process Management System (BPMS), Intalio|APEX recently earned the Powered by SAP NetWeaver™ certification.

"Enterprise applications are the new legacy — too expensive to maintain, yet too entrenched to displace," said Intalio's president and chief strategy officer, Ismael Ghalimi. "We estimate Intalio|APEX will reduce the cost of development and maintenance of extended SAP business processes by up to 75 percent, while giving SAP users a way to leverage their existing IT assets and improve business agility."

With Intalio|APEX, SAP customers can extend SAP software processes outside of their host applications, without ever writing code, to gain best-in-class business processes and move closer to the next generation of mySAP.com architecture. Technical and non-technical SAP users can work with Intalio|APEX to reduce their total cost of ownership of their SAP applications, while accommodating changes to the core business processes that they were originally deployed to support.

Emergence of the APEX Market

APEX, or Application Process Extension, responds to a fundamental challenge enterprise applications present most customers: deployed straight out of the box, enterprise applications fail to meet each customer's particular needs. As a result, customers must tailor the off-the-shelf offerings to reflect their unique ways of doing business.

While such customizations work when made to business objects only, they falter when made to complex business processes that span multiple business objects and applications. In turn, many deployments go over time and over budget. Meanwhile, the associated cost of maintenance for such customization, especially for an upgrade, can dramatically impact total cost of ownership and compromise overall return on investment. The maintenance and consolidation of existing systems and applications usually accounts for up to 85% of today's IT budgets.

To consolidate multiple mySAP.com instances, a company faces the costly and disruptive prospect of re-engineering its business processes to align with those of the application. The alternative — customizing the mySAP.com master instance — entails expensive, time-consuming ABAP™ programming that must be carried forward with each SAP upgrade.

Integrating new mySAP.com modules requires expensive integration efforts, especially with cross-functional processes that span modules. The mySAP.com modules offer limited, out-of-the-box, cross-application, business process integration. Likewise, companies pay a steep price to modify their existing end-user workflows. Similarly, companies upgrading to mySAP.com or SAP R/3 4.7 are hit with the high costs associated with re-implementing any existing customization in the new version.

Enter Intalio|APEX

Intalio offers a compelling answer for SAP customers looking to keep their SAP projects on time and on budget. When consolidating multiple mySAP.com instances, Intalio|APEX lets users extend the processes of the master instance to reduce the need for process re-engineering and keep traditional ABAP customization to a minimum.

SAP shops integrating new mySAP.com modules can use Intalio|APEX to automate cross-functional processes to increase the value of new module deployment, while slashing process integration costs. For those upgrading to mySAP.com (or SAP R/3 4.7), Intalio|APEX extends mySAP.com processes to simplify the migration of existing customization and significantly reduce code development.

Intalio|APEX has been developed on top of Intalio|n³, the only standards-based and platform-neutral Business Process Management System (BPMS). Powered by SAP NetWeaver, Intalio|APEX does not compete with SAP NetWeaver. Rather, Intalio|APEX complements existing SAP NetWeaver solutions by extending them with an application process extension development and runtime environment.

Intalio|APEX runs on top of SAP Web Application Server, and uses SAP Exchange Infrastructure for connectivity to SAP and non-SAP applications, as well as business partners. It leverages the SAP Enterprise Portal for end-user interfaces developed with SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, leverages SAP Master Data Management for service abstraction, and integrates bi-directionally with SAP Solution Manager, which is used for specification and configuration, while Intalio|APEX is used for extension.

In one tool and runtime package, Intalio|APEX lets users build processes that include system-to-system, system-to-human, and human-to-human transactions. No expertise with SAP Business Workflow, aka SAP WebFlow™, is necessary. Intalio|APEX coordinates distributed transactions across multiple instances and modules, as well as supports human workflows for SAP and non-SAP users, who are notified of tasks through SAP Enterprise Portal or any email client.

Functioning as an integrated process development environment, Intalio|APEX covers the entire lifecycle from discovery to implementation to testing. It supports the dynamic introspection of BAPIs, IDOCs, RFCs, and tables to immediately make these resources available for use as Web services. Intalio|APEX includes process maps of 1,800 mySAP.com reference models and features Intalio's ground-breaking Zero-Code Development™ methodology and a One-Click Deployment™ architecture to address the needs of process designers.

Intalio|APEX 3.0 is available today directly from Intalio, as well as from partners, such as SAP. Pricing is currently based on server and developer seat. For more information, contact Intalio at 650-596-1800, info@intalio.com, or www.intalio.com.

The new solution is designed to help companies increase the value of their supply chains by providing increased visibility in a near real-time environment. Unisys Global Visible Commerce Solutions act as "super aggregators," collecting and analyzing low-level data from an increasing number of supply chain data feeds - such as radio frequency identification(RFID) tags, cellular devices and barcodes - and injecting it into existing legacy applications, giving companies a single view into their extended supply chains.

"Executives who thoroughly understand their businesses with top to bottom traceability have a huge competitive advantage," said Ron Pellegrino, president, Proforma. "We are proud that through our participation in the Unisys 3D-VE initiative, Proforma will help even more organizations around the globe to optimize their processes and systems and succeed in today's dynamic economy."

At the core of the new solutions is Unisys unique 3D-VE methodology, which gives companies a holistic view into the cause-and-effect relationships between shifts in technology, business processes and strategy.

Unisys is using ProVision modeling tools to build a library of intellectual property around strategy and business processes to help companies more efficiently leverage the advantages of technology in their global supply chains. As a result, Unisys consultants will be able to develop and deploy solutions for clients more efficiently.

"Proforma provides complete model integration and traceability through organizational layers," said Fred Dillman, lead architect of Unisys 3D-VE methodology. "Also critical is Proforma's adoption of key industry standards, such as Business Process Execution Language and Model Driven Architecture -- standards that are at the core of Unisys 3D-VE strategy."

The solutions build on more than 10 years of Unisys history in RFID and track-and-trace work with business and government, and are tailored to meet the specific needs of companies in the life sciences, consumer product, retail, transportation and public sector industries.

For more information, visit www.unisys.com.

For information about Proforma Corporation please visit www.proformacorp.com for more information.

The new product was demonstrated at the Department of Defense Command Information Superiority Architectures (CISA) Worldwide Enterprise Architecture Conference 2004 in Honolulu.

System Architect is the first tool to offer support for ABM, a methodology created in part by The MITRE Corporation. The System Architect solution is designed to help architecture teams to get started using DoDAF by providing predefined and automated guidelines that support the capture of information and the generation of views for analysis and reporting.

The result is a more rapid, efficient, and streamlined architecture development process; architecture and analysis work products that facilitate review and collaboration; and an actionable, maintainable enterprise architecture that is acceptable to the Department of Defense (DoD), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Congress (under the Clinger-Cohen Act) and can be integrated with the Core Architecture Data Model (CADM).

“The enterprise systems development work being implemented by DoD agencies today has resulted in some of the most complex, sophisticated enterprise architecture projects ever undertaken,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “We’ve been able to integrate the ABM methodology into System Architect to give the Department of Defense a solution that combines process guidelines with a tool set, simplifying the development process. This solution is designed to drive significant time savings and efficiencies during the building of DoDAF-based architectures.”

ABM enables architects to concentrate on the “Art of Architecting,” identifying the core architecture elements, their views and their associations and letting automation complete the remaining architecture elements and views.

System Architect’s DoDAF with ABM option offers many of the operational and system products needed for analysis, design and communications from a core architecture view. The core architecture view consists of the OV-5 Activity Model Product and Operational Node relationships and the SV-4 Function Model Product and System Nodes relationships. System Architect provides a maintainable set of standard reference objects and a fully integrated set of additional DoDAF products and reports. Popkin has also made other tool improvements that improve the architecture development process for DoDAF and ABM.

DoDAF 1.0 is the next evolution of the C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) framework, which is currently used by the US military to support the planning, decision making, and execution of integrated battle scenarios.

For more information on Popkin’s System Architect enterprise architecture tools and services for the federal government, visit http://www.popkin.com/products/system_architect/sa_abm_for_dodaf.htm. The ABM option, one of several DoDAF modules being offered by Popkin, is available now. It is compatible with System Architect v9.1.40 and after.

The solution offering marries IBM's Basel II Risk and Compliance-Information Management Offering with Fair Isaac's Triad adaptive control system. The net result is an integrated system that lets banks drive strategic decisions around customer/account management, scoring, collections, credit-line management and marketing.

The Basel II solution is built on several key IBM business intelligence (BI) infrastructure components, including, DB2 Data Warehouse Edition (which has been upgraded with new advanced web-based analytics and reporting functions), WebSphere Information Integrator (a data federation product), and IBM Alphablox (an analytics tool vendor acquired last year). IBM says the solution is currently being deployed at 35 banks worldwide.

For its part, Fair Isaac, whose high-end analytic software provides the brains behind most credit scores and risk evaluations in the US, adds sophisticated account and customer portfolio management capabilities delivered from its Triad system.

This is not the first time the two companies have worked together. In May last year IBM integrated Triad into its Banking Data Warehouse (BDW) solution aimed at retail banks.

Basel II is a complex new standard for measuring risk. Part of the Accord mandates that banks accurately and efficiently manage and report on information.

ProServer was created to meet client demands for greater business agility. Its multi-user, remote-access server provides real-time development against a shared repository within Proforma's ProVisionT business process modeling,enterprise architecture and process simulation solution. ProServer makes key intellectual capital readily available and easily accessible via ProVision's web-based architecture.

"Business models and operational knowledge no longer have to sit in the hands of a few-- with ProServer they can become a key asset of the entire company," said Jerry Huchzermeier, Proforma's chairman and chief technology officer. "ProServer empowers distributed teams to dynamically refine business processes and systems in response to rapidly changing requirements. They can manage, communicate and distribute business knowledge and models anywhere, anytime."

Intelligent Features, Architecture Paramount in ProServer Performance, portability and the use of standard communication protocols are among ProServer's technical features: · True client/server architecture - provides web-based access using industry-standard HTTP protocols; can coordinate multi-client efforts · Performance - requires less operational information transmitted across a network; data compressed to minimize network traffic; performs well, even in low-bandwidth scenarios · Scalability - supports large volumes of information, as well as concurrent access by multiple users · Portability - runs on any Java-enabled web application server · Enterprise DBMS Support - relies on Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) to utilize industrial-strength DBMS · Security - enables administrators to define a single set of users and groups as well as the policies that grant access to an arbitrary number of shared repositories and notebooks

To learn more about Proforma, its ProServer technology and ProVision modeling suite, individuals can call 888.PVW.6903, write to info@proformacorp.com or visit www.proformacorp.com.

SAUG is an independent user group formed to share knowledge and experiences about System Architect, Popkin Software’s industry-leading enterprise architecture and modeling tool. This is Popkin’s third independent user group, along with groups in Australia and the United Kingdom. The user group is open to all System Architect users. “SIGs are the heart of the SAUG. They provide an independent forum for exchanging information and knowledge with peers who face the same challenges while making recommendations to Popkin for future product enhancements,” said Bruce Lang, enterprise architect, EDS, and SAUG committee chairman.

“The new SIG was formed to address the diverse range of applications that System Architect is being used for in the commercial world, from business-IT alignment to business process modeling using the emerging Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN). Our goal is to facilitate knowledge sharing to help us all work more effectively,” added Lang.

The SAUG also launched a redesigned Web site, http://www.saug-usa.org, to better support member communications on a variety of topics. A new Web site area enables members to discuss topics including understanding and implementing an enterprise architecture framework, transitioning from modeling into enterprise architecture and integration with third-party tools.

The user group is open to all System Architect users. The next meeting is on Friday, April 2, 2004, 9 AM - 3:30 PM, at SAIC, 1710 SAIC Drive, McLean, VA, 22102. The keynote speaker will be Ms. Catherine Santana, director of the Resource Management Transformation Office at the Department of Homeland Security. Ms Santana was previously the program manager of DoD's Business Management Modernization Program. Reservations are required. For more information or to join, visit http://www.saug-usa.org.

Popkin’s System Architect enterprise modeling and architecture tool set is the only solution that offers central repository support for NGOSS v3.5. The models are available free of charge to corporate TM Forum members and, in addition, Popkin is offering one System Architect license free of charge to qualified members. Non-members may purchase bundled licenses of System Architect and the models directly from Popkin through a TM Forum reseller agreement.

“System Architect enables service providers to use a management framework and a central repository of information to focus on how to systematically drive costs down while maximizing flexibility in response to changing economic factors,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “System Architect is the perfect solution for telecom organizations seeking a single software solution to capture, analyze and more easily visualize the relationships among business processes, data and applications in their telecom operations. Popkin delivers a ready-to-use set of TM Forum models and guidelines for business process mapping and the creation of systems and applications to support these processes.”

“The TM Forum’s outputs are setting the industry direction for lean operations. The integration of these standards with the Popkin tool set enables companies to centralize their information, processes and applications and systems, and then analyze them within a broader context,” said Martin Creaner, TM Forum CTO. “By using a single set of modeling tools, organizations can see how applications are aligned to business processes and leverage this information to improve their operations in a very competitive telecom marketplace.”

System Architect’s Framework Manager, a graphical user interface, brings all the models into Popkin’s repository, which distills the SID detail into a high-level perspective that illustrates the key data areas required across the telecom organization. System Architect’s eTOM support delivers a complete high level process map covering all areas of telecom business process, from strategy through fulfilment, assurance and billing. The SID models provide a detailed application-oriented view of the data and associations required to support the telecom business.

This option is available currently in System Architect. For more information, visit http://www.popkin.com/products/system_architect/tm_forum.htm

Architectures · Challenges going from individual systems to architectures for federations of systems · Model Driven Architecture® (MDA®) · Relationships between MDA, Web Services, Service Oriented Architectures Standards · State of the art and limitations in existing standards and emerging standards · MDA in the present and future of Web Services · SOAs and GRID computing · The Semantic Web Technologies · Interoperability among different technologies · Comparison and contrast between Application Servers, classical ORBs(Object Request Brokers)and XML Request Brokers Tools · Product and tool evaluation reports · Research and advanced development reports Case Studies

Interested individuals or organizations are invited to submit a brief abstract of the presentation or position paper they are proposing for a Workshop session, tutorial or panel, along with proposed duration and a brief personal biography via email to soa-ws@omg.org. Abstracts should be no longer than 1 page in length and must only use HTML, PDF or ASCII text formats. Only 3 abstracts per individual will be accepted. Biographies should be no longer than 50 words. Please do not send presentations to this email address; abstracts only. Abstracts are due by December 12, 2003. Submitters will be notified by December 18, 2003

Send email to soa-ws@omg.org for additional information about the workshop program or visit http://www.omg.org/news/meetings/dsoa2004/call.htm.

Celltech is a leading European biotechnology company, with extensive pharmaceutical operations in theU.S. and Europe, and a substantial long-term commitment to innovative drug discovery and development. IDS Scheer, Inc. is helping Celltech leverage the capabilities of the SAP Best Practices for Pharmaceuticals that will form the backbone of the SAP solution implementation. The first phase, scheduled to go live in January 2005, will replace Celltech North America’s disparate legacy systems with an implementation that will support multiple business processes, including sales, inventory, and contract management, and more on a single platform. Pending the results of phase one, Celltech plans a global rollout across the entire organization.

“As one of our largest biotech customer wins, we are pleased to offer Celltech our business process solutions. Our SAP solution implementation tools and consulting services will streamline their processes and unite their disparate systems under one platform,” said Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, CEO of IDS Scheer, Inc. Dr. Ferri Abolhassan, CEO and member of the executive board of IDS Scheer AG stated: “The Celltech win reinforces our expanded presence in North America and our ability to provide the global resources to rollout this SAP solution implementation worldwide.” “We will serve Celltech as a business partner that will help optimize all the functionality of its SAP system while leveraging it as a methodology for standardizing and optimizing business processes across its global organization,” commented Jason Mausberg, President, IDS Scheer Canada , a subsidiary of IDS Scheer, Inc, that will be driving the Celltech project implementation. “With SAP Best Practices for Pharmaceuticals as the anchor, Celltech will realize maximum benefits in this total reengineering effort.”

According to David Mayor, Project Leader on the Celltech SAP Implementation Team, the decision to engage IDS Scheer, Inc. was based on the solutions approach presented. “We found that IDS Scheer consultants took the time to understand our needs and presented a comprehensive solution versus a boxed product,” he commented. “As a regulated industry, pharmaceutical companies need to abide by strict FDA validation guidelines, as well as have comprehensive change control processes in place. When we compared SAP with other solutions, we found the combination of its pre-configured settings in SAP Best Practices for Pharmaceuticals, low implementation risks, and robust IT evaluations were far superior to the competition.” Richard Simon, IT Systems Architect who is working with Mayor on managing the technical infrastructure aspects of the SAP solution implementation at Celltech, was attracted to the scalability of the SAP platform which could be seamlessly extended throughout the Celltech organization at a low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). “It was critical for us to buy into an expandable platform to scale with us today and deploy more cost-effectively in the future – all with a low TCO.” Simon wants to optimize the SAP solution landscape with clustering and redundancy for high availability and multi site presence for disaster recovery, so that SAP can become the cornerstone business enabling platform for future initiatives within Celltech. “Our eventual goal is to use SAP solutions to support Celltech around the globe. We have plans to integrate it with our R&D efforts by leveraging mySAP Business Suite software including mySAP Business Intelligence (mySAP BI) and mySAP Customer Relationship Management (mySAP CRM).” The implementation will also include the Contract and Chargeback Scenario, which is part of the new industry specific capabilities of the newest version of mySAP CRM. Both Mayor and Simon understand the success of the project is contingent upon having the right business partner. “Having the right partner is a key factor to the overall success of this project. We understand that IDS Scheer Canada sets high standards for its consultants, and we are fully confident the team will deliver on its promises. It is critical for us to have a good consulting partner side by side as we coordinate this rollout,” said Simon. Dr Bill Henry, Director of Global Technical and Supply Operations at Celltech, commented further: “An efficient and adaptable global supply chain is critical in the complex and highly regulated industry we operate in. We have been impressed with the SAP solution and IDS Scheer’s comprehensive approach, and we believe that we will be able to realize significant efficiencies in our business as a result of this implementation.” Celltech Group plc (LSE: CCH; NYSE: CLL) is one of Europe's largest biotechnology companies, with an innovative development pipeline funded by its profitable, cash-generative pharmaceutical business. Celltech also possesses drug discovery capabilities of exceptional strength, including a leading position in antibody engineering. More details can be found at www.celltechgroup.com IDS Scheer, Inc.is the North America operation of IDS Scheer AG (Saarbrücken, Germany), is a leading provider of corporate solutions for business process management.

Founding members include EDS, High-Performance Technologies Inc. (HPTI), LMI, Lockheed Martin and SAIC. Other members consist of government agencies and contractors, with the plan to expand the group to include commercial organizations, industry experts and business partners from across the US and Canada. This is Popkin’s third independent user group, with others in Australia and the United Kingdom.

Diane Reeves, a member of the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA) Program Management Office of the Office of Management & Budget (OMB), is scheduled to speak at the SAUG’s next meeting on Friday, Oct. 17. Reeves is responsible for overseeing the development of the Data and Information Reference Model and is project leader for developing a model-driven approach to Process Architecture for the FEA. The briefing will address development and compliance issues around the Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF) and its recently published reference models. “As System Architect’s use spreads throughout the federal government community, we saw a need to charter a user group so we could share information about how to maximize the benefits of Popkin’s tools and services,” said Dan Cocks, chairman of the Popkin US user group. “Enterprise architecture in the federal government has evolved to the point where we need to do all we can to leverage our tools support the development process and help each agency understand how its technology supports its goals and mission.”

“This new user group is a fantastic opportunity for Popkin users to meet, share their experiences and sharpen their expertise in using System Architect to achieve their enterprise architecture goals,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “With firsthand knowledge of the tool’s evolution, users can provide feedback that will help us continually fine-tune our products and services to better meet the unique needs of the federal government.”

The user group is open to all users of System Architect. The next meeting is on Friday, October 17, 9 AM - 3:30 PM, at SAIC, 1710 SAIC Drive, McLean, VA, 22102. Reservations are required. For more information or to join, visit http://www.saug-usa.org.

Leading federal agencies and Fortune 500 businesses use System Architect to design models and enterprise architectures, or blueprints of a business’ goals and processes and its underlying IT infrastructure. It is the only tool to integrate, in one multi-user product, industry-leading support for all major modeling and enterprise architecture standards.

SOX compliance is driving the need for organizations to implement policies and procedures to ensure the integrity of financial reporting, as well as their internal control systems. To help executive management with accountability disclosure, the ARIS Toolset can document existing process and data flows and identify areas that need to be improved.

According to a September 15 research brief from AMR Research, Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance does not stop with documentation of business processes and controls. Organizations must actively enforce these policies and procedures, and technology can make it happen. The ARIS Toolset provides the blueprint to identify the scope of the roles, business capabilities, and the application infrastructure required to support them

The ARIS Toolset offers a complete package to help organizations comply through the entire SOX process chain including evaluation, documentation, and monitoring the efficiency of the internal control systems. The first step includes a GAP analysis of the existing internal control systems as well as compiling the components for developing an internal control handbook. The second step is the creation and documentation of these systems, which leads to the last step that includes regular monitoring to ensure ongoing SOX compliance.

“Our approach to SOX compliance can prevent such financial improprieties that have unfortunately occurred at Enron and Worldcom,” said Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, president and CEO, IDS Scheer, Inc. based in Berwyn, PA. “If internal control standards are not implemented within an organization, then that company is at risk. The ARIS Toolset enables organizations to achieve SOX compliance and also provides the strategic benefits of continuously improving processes and achieving other operational efficiencies.”

According to Kirchmer, the ARIS Toolset documents and evaluates SOX-relevant processes to determine the efficiency of the internal control system using an adapted methodology for risk management. Then, a web-based process repository is created to track SOX-relevant risks. The final rung is establishing a web-based workflow system including a SOX database. The implementation of the workflow system guarantees regular monitoring of SOX-relevant risks using test activities conducted by individuals assigned to this task. In addition, testing and monitoring the efficiency of control activities on a regular basis fulfills one of the central SOX requirements.

“Our methodology and expertise in the field of risk and process management will help organizations in their quest for SOX compliance. We have extensive expertise supporting SOX implementations for various companies and have developed benchmarks and best practices,” added Kirchmer.

As added incentive to achieve compliance, IDS Scheer offers its customers a pilot project program to identify, document and monitor SOX relevant processes and data using the ARIS Toolset. This provides the customer with a snapshot of what is needed to become SOX compliant.

IDS Scheer, Inc. will be unveiling its new solution specifically developed to help companies become SOX compliant at the DCI Performance Management Conference, December 2-4, 2003 in Boston. The conference will feature a seminar entitled: “Corporate Governance & Sarbanes-Oxley: A C-Level Roadmap for What to Do, Why and When.” IDS Scheer, Inc. will be an event sponsor and exhibitor as well.

About Sarbanes-Oxley Act

In an effort to counter the string of corporate and accounting scandals, President Bush has signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Bill into law. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, among other things, creates an oversight board to monitor the accounting industry, toughens penalties against executives who commit corporate fraud and increases the Securities and Exchange Commission budget for auditors and investigators. For more information, visit www.sarbanes-oxley.com

Among the many enhancements, this release will benefit Adaptive’s clients and partners by making it quicker and easier to tailor the solution to a wide range of end users. Also featuring in this release:

Improved performance More powerful data import capability Improved visualization Enhanced security Enhanced collaboration capability

Adaptive IT Portfolio Manager™ lets users capture and visualize the enterprise IT architecture to provide a 360 degree view of the inter-dependencies among IT, applications, interfaces, data, infrastructure and the business processes, projects, organization structure and strategic direction. By providing a holistic view of the enterprise IT assets, ITPM exposes complex relationships and dependencies to enable an organization to identify impacts, risks and potential costs of any changes, as well as identify insufficiently used capability, bottlenecks, redundancies and duplications. In short, it enables users to optimize the alignment between IT and the business.

ITPM is built on the open, standards-based, powerful and scalable Adaptive Foundation™ repository platform, deployed via an impressive web-based browser interface that is easily integrated into the way users already work. ITPM works with Microsoft® SQL Server and Oracle®.

Jeff Goins, Executive VP of Adaptive, said: “The overriding need to cut costs, increase efficiency and to improve profitability is a significant challenge in today’s economy. Adaptive’s ITPM delivers significant benefits to an IT organization in addressing these issues, by enabling it to achieve faster time-to-market, plan changes to its IT portfolio and determine the impact on the complex interdependencies between applications, data, interfaces, and infrastructure and their relationship to business processes, organization structure, projects and strategic direction. Organizations can now clearly understand the impacts of the business on IT.

”ITPM will leverage the value of finite resources and budgets by helping ensure that IT investments align with business imperatives and compliance mandates affecting organizations today.”

www.adaptive.com | info@adaptive.com | +44 (0) 1202 449444 | +1 804 777 9075

“Enterprise architecture will enable us to better leverage technology to execute our business processes and build an operational platform for the growth of the Peace Corps in the 21st century,” said Gopal Khanna, chief information officer at the Peace Corps. “We aim to recruit and deploy Peace Corps Volunteers more safely and effectively to share their skills and experiences in 70+ countries throughout the world.”

“More federal agencies are recognizing that a strong enterprise architecture offers a way to analyze internal needs and develop plans of action to help the organization operate more efficiently,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “By using System Architect to build an enterprise view of their operations, the Peace Corps will be able to access relevant, reliable and timely information to support informed decision-making and reporting. We are proud to be participating in this key initiative for the Peace Corps.”

The Peace Corps is working with MITRE's Center for Enterprise Modernization, the primary contractor on the project. The team will use System Architect to analyze and document the Peace Corps' organization and operations to produce an enterprise architecture that enables the Agency to work more efficiently.

The Peace Corps’ architecture initiative targets several key areas: volunteer safety, volunteer recruitment and assignment and knowledge management. The Peace Corps hopes to use the architecture to integrate systems and processes for volunteer applications to facilitate post assignments and more quickly bring together countries with needs and volunteers with skills that will help address them.

Since 1961, more than 168,000 volunteers have served in the Peace Corps in 136 countries, working in such diverse fields as education, health and HIV/AIDS education, information technology, business development, the environment and agriculture.

Popkin Software is a U.S.-based company, Popkin Software & Systems is a leading developer of enterprise architecture tools for the federal government. System Architect is the only enterprise architecture and modeling tool that offers complete support for operational, systems and technology modeling to produce required government framework deliverables at the enterprise or project level. System Architect offers integrated support for the Dept. of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF), formerly the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) framework. System Architect also supports Treasury Enterprise Architecture Framework (TEAF), Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF), Zachman and other frameworks as well as the IDEF (Integrated Computer-Aided Manufacturing (ICAM) DEFinition) methodologies. For more information, visit at http://www.government.popkin.com.

Founded in New York City in 1986, privately held Popkin Software has sold more than 60,000 licenses worldwide.

Established as a consultancy in 1946, Plaut is a full service provider of consulting services, operating in 16 countries internationally with over 1,500 consultants. The acquisition of Plaut will expand IDS Scheer’s consulting practice, targeting large corporations and mid-sized enterprises in a range of industries, including capital goods, consumer goods, retail, and services. "This strategic acquisition provides additional mid-market strength and further positions IDS Scheer as a full-service provider of business process management software and consulting, as well as IT and strategic consulting,” said Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, President and CEO of IDS Scheer, Inc.

As part of the acquisition, IDS Scheer AG will gain 400 mid-and large-sized customers in North America and Eastern Europe from Plaut including Jim Walter Homes and Southwestern/Great American, Inc. Plaut’s Eastern European unit includes local subsidiaries in Austria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. Plaut’s North American offices in the US and Canada operate primarily as SAP consulting companies focused on large corporations and as SAP resellers in the SME (small to medium enterprise) market.

Through this transaction, IDS Scheer will also acquire 450 employees from Plaut. The new IDS Scheer employees will complement the company’s existing consulting expertise, leveraging the methodology and software tools of ARIS, the leading business process management solution highly regarded by leading technology analyst groups.

The company anticipates revenue of approximately $86.2 million USD/75.0 million EUR from the two Plaut units for the entire fiscal year 2003. “Integrating the Plaut offering into our strategic mix places IDS Scheer in a different league,” explained Dr. August-Wilhelm Scheer, founder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board of IDS Scheer AG. “The Plaut units will bring us a significant expansion in our products and services as well as a sharp increase in our market presence in Eastern Europe and North America.”

According to Dr. Ferri Abolhassan, Co-Chairman of the Executive Board of IDS Scheer, integration measures will follow a phased roll-out plan. This plan includes integration of employees, the consolidation of IT infrastructures, restructuring, and marketing activities. Integration and restructuring has already begun and will be concluded and completely posted in the current fiscal year. “This strategic acquisition reinforces our market leadership in Eastern Europe and steps up the expansion of our US business. Both regionally and strategically, this is a perfect match and a quantum leap for the IDS Scheer Group worldwide,” he said.

About Plaut AG Clients in over 16 countries benefit from Plaut’s comprehensive portfolio of management consulting, business process solutions, and IT and hosting services, namely with the company’s specific understanding of the capital-goods, consumer-goods, retail, and service industries. Since 1946 Plaut has provided its customers with concrete added business value using the Plaut Methodology® in controlling and decades of experience in system integration, especially in the SAP environment. Plaut AG, Salzburg, has been listed in the General Standard of the Geregelter Markt (PUT; WKN 918 703; ISIN AT0000954359) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since January 2, 2003. From 1999 to 2002 the company was listed on the Neuer Markt, and achieved revenue of 216 million euros with 1,366 employees at the end of 2002. For more information about Plaut, please visit: www.plaut.com.

About IDS Scheer, Inc. IDS Scheer, Inc. is a global leader in providing business process consulting and software solutions. With more than 1,600 employees worldwide, IDS Scheer combines innovative technology with a range of vertical market expertise to help organizations create bottom line effects through their business process initiatives, such as General Process Improvement, Enterprise Architecture, E-business, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Planning. The company's ARIS product suite is the market leader in business process management, including the award-winning ARIS Toolset and ARIS Process Performance Manager (PPM) which are used by many Global 1000 organizations worldwide and consistently recognized by the industry's leading technology analyst groups. The company was founded in 1984 by August-Wilhelm Scheer, and now advises some 3,000-plus clients in more than 50 countries through its network of subsidiaries and partners. For more information, visit http://www.ids-scheer.com/us.

•IT architecture development. System Architect now provides integrated support for The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) version 7, a standard methodology that details the development of systems architecture and has been embraced by Fortune 500 companies worldwide. System Architect’s unique Framework Manager allows users to navigate easily through this framework.

•Enhanced graphics. System Architect also now supports SVG technology (Scalable Vector. Graphics) enabling users to view their very large, complex models.

System Architect is used by organizations to design models and enterprise architectures, or blueprints of a business’ goals and processes and its underlying IT infrastructure. It is the only tool to integrate, in one multi-user product, industry-leading support for all major modeling and enterprise architecture standards.

System Architect version 9.1 will be available at the end of July. Visit www.popkin.com for additional details.

Successful businesses need to be agile so they can respond to changing market conditions caused by mergers and acquisitions, industry regulations, outsourcing, or business continuity planning. Companies need to be able to make the right change rapidly, in terms of minimizing operational costs, reducing risk and increasing responsiveness to customers. This solution will enable companies to accurately predict the effects of future change on the business.

“Modeling and simulation are natural partners. The more complex the model the more benefit you get from simulation,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “This solution gives you model-driven simulation. By altering certain model parameters you can accurately see the effect on the business through the simulation results.”

“Through this partnership, Popkin and Lanner customers can achieve a previously unattainable new level of decision-making through the simulated design, verification and optimization of designed and architected processes,” said David Jones, VP Marketing, Lanner Group. “For the first time Lanner now brings a highly accurate element of ‘what if.?’ to decision-making within business process modeling, providing increased confidence and success in the design and execution of agile process-driven businesses.”

Popkin Software and Lanner Group intend to provide a user-friendly, graphical interface that will make business process modeling more accesDear Paul Harmon,sible to business users. This product will be available in September.

Visit www.popkin.com or www.lanner.com for additional details.

Proforma’s ProVision software sales have seen a 30 percent increase while Proforma’s revenues have increased by 40 percent. Recently, its list of top-tier clients topped 5,000. Many of the Fortune 1000 are counted among Proforma’s customers including General Motors, American Express, Hewlett Packard, Intel, IBM, Warner Brothers and J.D. Edwards.

"This has been a very exciting year for Proforma," said Hugh Mensch, Proforma’s Vice President of Business Development. "Our expansion, which is a reflection of our success to date, solidifies our place as a leader in the business process modeling industry. We look forward to moving ahead and positioning ProVision™ as the standard for enterprise-wide business process modeling software." Proforma’s new space features additional offices for the growing staff, as well as enhanced customer training facilities. It is located in Pleasanton, California.

For more information on the company or its ProVision Modeling Suite, contact Proforma at 888.798.6903 or proforma@proformacorp.com.

"We selected the Identitech FYI product because it is the most cost effective and complete software capable of meeting ADESA's extensive list of requirements for a fully integrated forms, workflow and document management solution," said Jim Stewart, project lead for ADESA Corp. "Identitech's demonstrated understanding of our business, superior features and tremendous technical depth all contributed to our final decision to adopt the FYI technology."

Using automated workflow technology to ensure consistent customer service levels and electronic document management to streamline a paperwork intensive environment, PAR North America expects to reduce operating costs and improve revenues significantly in 2004 when it is deployed.

"ADESA is a leader in the vehicle remarketing industry and is always looking for ways to improve technology and reduce expenses," said Charlie Warner, vice president of sales for Identitech. "Having the ability to quickly adjust to customer demands through customizable workflow will enhance ADESA's customer relationships and we look forward to working with them to meet their business goals."

For more information on Identitech and the products and services offered, visit us at www.identitech.com or call (321) 951-9503.

Sears is working with IDS Scheer to introduce its corporate culture to viewing business processes in a more disciplined and integrated manner.

The ARIS Toolset is specifically designed to support today’s global businesses, offering a complete suite of Web-based tools to document, analyze, implement, and optimize inter- and intra-company business processes worldwide. Sears project implementation will identify all of the company’s application systems and rank them by business process value and competitive advantage. IDS Scheer consultants will help Sears model and analyze the company’s business processes and then monitor these processes. The goal of the deployment is to create a company culture directed towards understanding and improving the business processes of the organization.

“As one of our larger deals in North America, we embrace the challenge of helping Sears improve its business processes,” said Dr. Mathias Kirchmer, President and CEO of IDS Scheer, Inc. “Today, more than ever, companies such as this retail giant must use a process-oriented approach to maximize efficiency and ensure the success of new business initiatives.”

Additionally, Sears will implement IDS Scheer’s ARIS Process Performance Manager (PPM), which was recently enhanced, to provide measures to evaluate the efficiency of their processes. ARIS PPM 3.0 provides easy access to process data that companies need to develop a comprehensive process performance plan. This gives process managers an up to date view of all business data at any time, making it easier to detect cause and effect chains between process performance and future quarterly results.

About IDS Scheer, Inc. IDS Scheer, Inc. is the global leader in providing business process consulting and software solutions. With more than 1,500 employees worldwide, IDS Scheer combines innovative technology with a range of vertical market expertise to help organizations create bottom line effects through their business process initiatives, such as General Process Improvement, Enterprise Architecture, E-business, Supply Chain Management, Customer Relationship Management and Enterprise Resource Planning. The company's ARIS product suite is the market leader in business process management, including the award-winning ARIS Toolset and ARIS Process Performance Manager (PPM) which are used by many Global 1000 organizations worldwide, and consistently recognized by the industry's leading technology analyst groups. The company was founded in 1984 by August-Wilhelm Scheer, and now advises some 3,000 clients in more than 50 countries through its network of subsidiaries and partners. For more information, visit http://www.ids-scheer.com/us.

The announcement was made at TeleManagement World, an international telecommunications conference in Nice, France, May 19-22, hosted by the TeleManagement Forum.

eTOM and SID are part of the TMF’s flagship New Generation Operations Systems and Software (NGOSS) program that delivers a toolkit to guide the development of Business and Operations Support Systems (BSS and OSS) and defines a strategic direction for a more standardized OSS marketplace.

Chris Nugent, Senior Vice President, Popkin Software, explains the organization’s support for NGOSS, “Using System Architect, architects are able to distribute key deliverables alongside each other in a single tool with a single repository. By using System Architect’s Framework Manager, a graphical user interface, all of these models are brought together into Popkin’s own Telecommunications Architectural Framework (TAF).”

One TMF member, Vodafone, is already realizing the benefits of using System Architect with the TMF models. Roger Cutts, Global System Architect, Vodafone Global Products and Services, explains, “Vodafone has taken the lead in utilizing Popkin’s System Architect for TMF architectural outputs and has successfully integrated the eTOM and the SID into our Global Architecture. The main benefit of using System Architect over any other tool is the ability to hold process models, data models and UML diagrams in a single repository and establish links between all the various objects in the repository.”

Specifically, eTOM is a complete high level process map covering all areas of telecom business process, from strategy through fulfilment, to assurance and billing. The SID models give a detailed object-oriented view of the data and associations required to support the telecom business and are gathered into a framework which distils the essence of the SID detail into a business level perspective of the key data areas required across the telecom organization.

The TMF supports the Popkin development. “TMF welcomes the initiative by Popkin to package eTOM with the System Architect tool,” says Mike Kelly, TMF. “TMF is also pleased that this is being extended to other areas within the NGOSS program, such as the SID model. Bringing together the industry consensus from the TMF work, with the support and capabilities of the Popkin toolset, is a winning combination. It is now possible for TMF Members and other users to explore this exciting interactive development environment with the full content immediately accessible and usable. This will be a great way of gaining direct value in a hands-on setting.”

The models are available free of charge to TMF members and, in addition, Popkin is offering one System Architect free of charge to qualified members. A reselling agreement with TMF means that non-members may purchase bundled licenses of System Architect and the models directly from Popkin.

The TeleManagement Forum (TM Forum) is a non-profit global organization that provides leadership, strategic guidance and practical solutions to improve the management and operation of information and communications services. The TM Forum boasts 340 members worldwide, from incumbent and new-entrant service providers, network equipment suppliers, software solution suppliers and Systems Integrators (SIs).

Popkin Software (www.popkin.com) is a leading provider of powerful, flexible business and application modeling and design tools and services that help companies optimize enterprise and e-business processes.

New York (May 6, 2003), The Department of Army and Popkin Software (www.popkin.com), a leading developer of enterprise architecture tools, have entered into a Department of Defense (DoD)-wide Enterprise License Agreement for Popkin’s enterprise architecture and modeling tools also known as “Architecture Modeling Solution – Popkin” or AMS-P. Available products and services, under Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) DABL01-03-A-0001, include the System Architect enterprise architecture and modeling tool set, and add-on options such as the C4ISR Extension, SA Simulator, XML Architect and DOORS Interface.

“Agencies within the DoD have been using Popkin products and services for many years,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “The blanket purchase agreement makes it easier for defense department employees to purchase and use Popkin’s software and services for their many modeling and enterprise architecture projects.” Under the agreement, DoD agencies and their contractors may purchase Popkin’s products and services under the agreed Enterprise Software Initiative schedule. Annual maintenance for these products, training and consulting services are also included on the schedule. The effective date of the BPA is March 27, 2003.

The DoD Enterprise Software Initiative (ESI) was established to procure common software at the best pricing available and is focused on saving money and improving interoperability within the DoD. For additional information, visit the Army Small Computer Program Website at http://pmscp.monmouth.army.mil or the DoD ESI website at http://www.don-imit.navy.mil/esi/ under the Enterprise Architecture Tools Product Category on the Designated Software List.

The WfMC announced at its April meeting in New York that Jon Pyke, of the United Kingdom, is the second recipient of the Marvin L. Manheim Award for outstanding contributions in the field of workflow. The Marvin L. Manheim award is presented annually by the Workflow Management Coalition to recognize an individual or a group for their influence, contribution, or distinguished use of workflow systems. Mr. Pyke has been involved in Information Technology (IT) since the mid 1970s and has a wide range of skills covering just about every aspect of software development, systems analysis and design, project management, consultancy, product management and marketing. He has served as Staffware’s Chief Technology Officer for over the past 11 years and is responsible for the development and continued leadership of Staffware’s workflow and BPM solutions. He has written and published a number of technical and business articles on the subject of office automation and workflow technology. Over the years, he has demonstrated unswerving leadership and support for process-related standards. In addition to his role within Staffware, he is a founding member, and current Chair of the WfMC, and a director of the AIIM Special Interest Group on Process Automation and Management, was awarded an AIIM Laureate for Workflow and held the position of vice chair of AIIM’s Emerging Technology Advisory Board (EmTAG). “I feel honored to receive this prestigious award, particularly on the auspicious occasion of the WfMC’s 10th anniversary,” said Jon Pyke.” My vision is straightforward. Business software has long been used to support key business processes, there is nothing new in this notion. What has changed though is the realization that the easiest ways for organizations to be competitive, manage costs, be viable, be flexible and responsive, is to understand and improve the structure and execution of their business processes.” He believes, strongly, that industry standards are key: “Bringing together a range of technologies and methodologies under a single banner will undoubtedly reduce risk and get the technology readily accepted, for the benefit of us all,” added Pyke. “We’re very proud that Jon Pyke was selected as the Manheim Award winner in this auspicious year of WfMC’s 10th anniversary,” said Layna Fischer, WfMC General Manager. “It’s a fitting tribute for Jon to be recognized not only for his global contributions to the workflow industry, but also for the substantial time and energy he has specifically devoted to guiding the Coalition for the past three years as WfMC chair.“

About Marvin L. Manheim

Marvin L. Manheim was the William A. Patterson Distinguished Professor of Transportation at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University from 1983 until his death in August 2000. Prof. Manheim was also associated with Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, Transportation Center, Steel Resource Center, Institute for Learning Studies and Center for the Study of United States/Japan Relations, and taught executive management programs at Kellogg's James L. Allen Center. Prior to joining the Kellogg School, he held faculty positions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prof. Manheim's major area of interest was information technology and its uses strategically, competitively, and organizationally. It included strategy formulation and implementation processes; the management of globally competing organizations; and international transportation and logistics. He was also interested in computer assistance to human problem solving and decision-making, including decision support systems (DSS) and artificial intelligence.

Cash flow up by factor of 10 Operating profit grew by 180% Net profit climbs by factor of 2.4 Revenue increased by 13.2% International subsidiaries profitable Liquid assets reached more than 100 million EUR Increased dividends to be proposed

Fiscal year 2002 was a record year for IDS Scheer: Operating profit increased by 178.9% over 2001 to 23.7 million EUR, yielding an EBIT margin of 13.1% (previous year: 5.3%). Earnings per share increased by 140% to 0.43 EUR (previous year: 0.18 EUR). Because of this positive development in results, the Executive Board and Supervisory Board will propose increasing the dividend payout to 0.10 EUR (previous year: 0.08 EUR) to the shareholders’ general meeting. The international business process management software and consulting firm posted revenue of 181.4 million EUR (previous year: 160.2 million EUR), up 13.2%, which was generated almost exclusively by internal growth. Following this strong growth in fiscal year 2002, IDS Scheer began 2003 in a position of strength accompanied with a series of new large contracts with international clients. IDS Scheer plans to grow above the market average again in fiscal year 2003: revenue is projected to grow by 10% - primarily internally, with an EBIT margin of 10%.

The business segments consulting and software products both achieved a high growth rate of 13%. The consulting segment showed strong and profitable development – especially in the areas of consumer goods, chemical/pharmaceuticals and public administration. The product segment also bucked the general market trend with significant expansion in business volumes with ARIS, the leading software solution for business process management which has been sold more than 37,000 times. With a combination of sound consulting expertise and the leading software solution, IDS Scheer has broad industry experience and focused topical expertise. The 15 international companies achieved a significant turnaround with targeted market preparation and focus on core competencies. They posted revenues of 66.2 million EUR (previous year: 62.4 million EUR) and earnings of 1.3 million EUR (previous year: -8.4 million EUR). The Eastern European company, IDS Scheer CEE, with subsidiaries in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakjia, Slovenjia, Hungaria and Austria achieved particularly high increases in revenue and results while doubling the revenues to an amount of 23.7 million EUR (previous year: 11.9 million EUR). In America the increase in earnings is best demonstrated. By consistently focussing on profitability the U.S. subsidiaries reached a significant turnaround. Big projects with new customers guarantee a solid utilization in the mid term. The subsidiary in Brazil stood up against the negative market environment and achieved a two-digit EBIT margin. The subsidiaries in Western Europe and South-East Asia have also developed as planned, they contributed to the positive earnings and won additional market shares. Marked increase in cash flow, results and dividend Cash flow from current business activities increased by a factor of more than 10, from 2.3 million EUR in 2001 to 27.2 million EUR in 2002. This increase resulted primarily from an increase in net income to 13.5 million EUR, as well as the significantly reduced commitment of funds due to shortened payment terms for customers. Trade receivables were reduced significantly from 50 million EUR to 46.8 million EUR in 2002, while total assets as of December 31, 2002 increased to 201.6 million EUR (previous year: 186 million EUR). The increase of 8.4% resulted primarily from an increase in cash and cash equivalents, which grew to 100.2 million EUR (previous year 91.2 million EUR). Earnings before taxes (EBT) and minority interests increased 160% from 10.1 million EUR in the previous year to 26 million EUR in fiscal year 2002. Income tax increased to 11.6 million EUR (previous year: 4.5 million EUR), representing a per-capita tax load of 44.7%, the same level as the previous year. Net profit increased to 13.5 million EUR, compared with 5.7 million EUR in the previous year, a rise of almost 140%. Earnings rose to 0.425 EUR per share on the total number of shares issued. This represents an increase of 135% over the previous year‘s result of 0.181 EUR per share. In light of the outstanding operating result for 2002, IDS Scheer plans to have the shareholders once again participate in the company's success. The Executive Board and the Supervisory Board will propose a dividend of 0.10 EUR per share (previous year: 0.08 EUR per share) to the 2003 general shareholders' meeting. International project successes A successful fiscal year 2002 in a difficult external market environment leaves IDS Scheer in a particularly strong position to begin the new year. This trend is reinforced by new large projects in Germany as well as abroad at companies including Brasil Telecom (Brazil), Hewlett-Packard (Japan), M-real Alliance (Finland), Saturnus (Slovenia), Nordzucker (Germany) and the INA Schaeffler Group, an international company specializing in precision technology for automobiles, industry and commerce. In early 2003 IDS Scheer began two large productive projects at Beiersdorf and Unilever and was contracted for follow-up projects. International cosmetics manufacturer Beiersdorf switched over its complex system landscape from SAP R/2 to SAP R/3, including additional system elements such as APO, BW, EBP and PLM, on schedule. Unilever’s merger required the integration of all business processes on a common platform. Another large contract was signed in February with Siemens AG, which elected to implement ARIS throughout its international offices to implement process management. In addition to software licenses, IDS Scheer is also providing comprehensive consulting services to implement worldwide process management at Siemens. In February 2003, IDS Scheer became one of only 11 companies worldwide to receive the status of “SAP Global Partner-Services.” For a company to be selected as an SAP Global Partner, it must meet a number of requirements in regard to geographical presence, market leadership, reference projects, revenues, and expertise. By achieving this sought-after partner status, IDS Scheer now moves into a prominent position worldwide for customers and prospects in the SAP market. Positive outlook Through continuous developments and innovations, IDS Scheer improves business processes and achieves an increase in the business value of IT. The company plans to tap additional market segments and growth potentials with an innovation initiative. These innovations include all aspects of the process lifecycle, with product and consulting innovations playing equal roles. Process efficiency and return on investment (ROI) are the focus of the new consulting solutions that IDS Scheer will present at the CeBIT trade show in March. The new ARIS Scouts will link proven methodology with practical consulting expertise for specific topics. CRM projects, for instance, will be considerably accelerated with ARS CRM Scout, and companies will be able to reduce their product-development time drastically with the software and consulting solution Time To Market (T2M). IDS Scheer will soon be one of 30 companies traded on the newly created TecDAX quality index, which represents the largest technologically oriented companies in the DAX. Since the beginning of the year IDS Scheer stock has been listed on the prime standard, which commands the highest international transparency and publicity requirements, strongly oriented toward the needs of domestic and foreign investors. In light of the favorable starting position and strengthened worldwide market positioning, IDS Scheer is confident of continued profitable growth above industry averages. The continued high level of liquid assets of over 100.2 million EUR (previous year: 91.2 million EUR) forms an important basis for further growth with targeted acquisitions.

Jim Hugunin, a PARC researcher who led the original development work on AspectJ said, "We are pleased that the Eclipse community will continue to enhance and refine the AspectJ code. Together, we are working hard to get the next release out and welcome broad community support."

"Eclipse and the Eclipse Technology Project are delighted to become the new home of AspectJ," said Dr. Brian Barry, who leads the Eclipse Technology Project. "AspectJ represents an outstanding example of new approaches to improving the developer experience and software productivity that have been enabled by reusing core elements of the Eclipse Platform."

About Eclipse Eclipse is an open-source community that creates technology and a universal platform for tools integration. The open-source Eclipse community creates royalty-free technology as a platform for tools integration. Eclipse based tools give developers freedom of choice in a multi-language, multi-platform, multi-vendor supported environment. Eclipse delivers a plug-in based framework that makes it easier to create, integrate and use software tools, saving time and money. By collaborating and sharing core integration technology, tool producers can concentrate on their areas of expertise and the creation of new development technology. The Eclipse Platform is written in the Java language, and comes with extensive plug-in construction toolkits and examples. It has already been deployed on a range of development workstations including Linux, Posix, QNX and Windows based systems. Full details of the Eclipse community and white papers documenting the design of the Eclipse Platform are available at www.eclipse.org.

“Popkin and Intalio have been collaborating in the development of business process modeling standards within the BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) working group at the BPMI.org,” said Howard Smith, CTO for Computer Science Corporation Europe, and co-chair of BPMI.org. “Rich enterprise process modeling is one of the key applications of the new breed of Business Process Management Systems (BPMS). With this alliance process modeling is no longer disconnected from process management. All existing IT assets can be directly leveraged as reusable process assets.”

“The strategic partnership between Intalio and Popkin takes business process management to a whole new level for organizations attempting to capture and manage their business processes,” said Stan Freeman, vice president, Business Development, Intalio. “Integrating the products will enable organizations to use System Architect to model their business processes, then create a straight-through path to process deployment using Intalio’s cutting-edge technology. This solution helps reduce the total cost of process modeling, execution and management and increases development efficiencies across a variety of enterprise applications.”

“Popkin has been delivering business process modeling solutions to its customers for more than a decade, and is also one of the original developers of the BPMN standard,” said Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “We believe that our partnership with Intalio will give organizations a flexible, comprehensive solution for deploying enterprise-level business process modeling and management throughout the enterprise.”

Organizations can use the Intalio-Popkin solution to manage the complete business process lifecycle from design and development of business processes through their implementation, deployment, execution, analysis and optimization. To do this, System Architect will export BPML generated from process models either created using traditional techniques such as IDEF or the newly defined BPMN. The BPML is then fully executable in Intalio n|3 Designer and deployed onto the Intalio n|3 Server. The new solution will be available in early 2Q.

Intalio, Inc. was founded in July 1999 and is located in San Mateo, Calif. For more information, contact Intalio at 650-577-4700, info@intalio.com, or www.intalio.com.

Popkin Software (www.popkin.com) is a leading provider of powerful, flexible business modeling and enterprise architecture tools and services that help companies optimize enterprise and e-business processes. Founded in New York City in 1986, privately held Popkin Software has sold more than 60,000 licenses worldwide.

In addition to TOGAF, Popkin supports or participates in many standards bodies including: Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS), Supply-Chain Operations Reference Model (SCOR), Business Process Management Initiative (BPMI), Telemanagement Forum, Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) and Six Sigma. Popkin also offers product support for US federal government framework standards: Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR), Treasury Enterprise Architecture Framework (TEAF), Dept. of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) and Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework (FEAF).

“With the addition of TOGAF 7, Popkin has expanded its breadth of support for industry standards,” Jan Popkin, CEO, Popkin Software. “Because IT architecture design is an important component of building enterprise architecture, TOGAF support is the next logical step for Popkin. We will continue to embrace the wide range of architecture standards used by our customers in their development projects. “We are committed to ensuring that System Architect offers the complete set of features developers need for architecture design, including a powerful, central, multi-user repository to facilitate information sharing and collaboration. More organizations are using System Architect to take the first step in aligning their IT architecture to their business processes and requirements,” Popkin added. Popkin Software is a leading provider of enterprise architecture and modeling tools and services that help companies optimize enterprise and e-business processes. Popkin’s flagship product, System Architect, is the first fully integrated enterprise modeling tool to address the full lifecycle of business and systems information management in an enterprise. Clients include IBM, AT&T, British Airways, Scholastic, JB Hunt, Siemens, Virgin Mobile, Compaq, GlaxoSmithKline, Samsung, Lockheed Martin and The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). Founded in New York City in 1986, privately held Popkin Software has sold more than 60,000 licenses worldwide. For more information, contact Popkin at www.popkin.com.

This integrated solution allows information to be synchronized amongst SteelTrace Catalyze, Rational Rose and Rational RequisitePro in an incremental and highly iterative fashion. A full and complete use case requirements model is developed in SteelTrace Catalyze through graphical and textual representations of a use case's flow of events, scenarios, steps, and other details of the use case model. Use cases in Catalyze are synchronized with Rational RequisitePro and managed as formal requirements. Rational RequisitePro manages these requirements by tracking requirement changes, attributes, and relationships to other requirements. The integration provides a semantically rich bridge between the textual use case requirements in Rational RequisitePro, the use case requirements model in SteelTrace Catalyze and a UML visual model in Rational Rose. Use case behavior is translated into a description of interoperating objects that ultimately evolves into an executable implementation.

"This integration delivers the complete use case requirements development capability that the market has been demanding," said SteelTrace CEO, Mark Melville. "With this complete solution, organizations can bridge the gap between the business and technical disciplines necessary to ensure they are delivering successful solutions that meet their customer's business needs."

"The integration of Catalyze with Rational RequisitePro and Rational Rose provides Rational customers a powerful solution for use-case driven development," said Kurt Bittner, Director of Requirements Management Solutions at Rational Software. "The combined solution offers the industry's only comprehensive requirements development platform using use cases to drive project success."

SteelTrace develops business process and requirements capture tools that increase the accuracy between customer requirements and system delivery. Catalyze LT, Catalyze Professional and Catalyze Enterprise help Business Process Engineers, Project Managers, Business Analysts and Systems Analysts to capture, view and manage customer requirements and system specifications. SteelTrace was founded in February 2001 and has offices in London UK, Washington DC, Dublin Ireland and San Francisco. SteelTrace is a netdecisions group company. For more information, contact SteelTrace at (Ireland) 1-800 201136 or (US) 1 888 807-0791.

? ProcessPro-Model and improve your processes and supporting organizational structures ? EnterprisePro-Model your entire enterprise… strategy, processes and systems ? AnalyzerPlus-Optimize your processes with simulation and detailed analysis ? WebVision-Distribute your models across the enterprise via the web ? TeamWork-Manage and administer your team’s process and system models ? DataExchange-Exchange data with Visio, Rational, Erwin, MS Office, & BPML

Two key modelers have been added to complete the ProVision enterprise framework: the strategy modeler and the communication modeler. This powerful framework will not only support the Zachman and C4ISR frameworks, it will effectively model all dimensions of your enterprise and support initiatives such as process improvement, Six Sigma, ISO certification and application development.

“When enterprise concepts are understood and modeled, they collectively represent the organization’s operational architecture and serve as the basis for sound decision-making and operational improvements,” said Hugh Mensch, vice president of business development at Proforma. Additional enhancements such as balanced scorecard and Six Sigma support, along with a new publishing facility, make understanding, analyzing and improving your business quick and easy.

The new Strategy Model allows strategic components such as Goals, Metrics, Problems, Opportunities, Rules and Environmental Influences to be related on the same model. This model can be used for a variety of purposes, such as supporting the balanced scorecard approach for setting goals and measuring performance, or cause and effect analysis.

The new Communication Model allows a diverse set of object types and their communication patterns (networks) to be shown on the same model. This model can show the Communication links that exist between physical assets (Locations, Facilities and Equipment), system components (Systems and Stores), organizational components (Markets, Organizations, Roles and People), and process components (Business Domains, Processes and Activities).

To make Six Sigma projects easier, ProVision now contains a Six Sigma user interface. This helps organize all the ProVision models by Six Sigma project phases. The ProVision publishing facility has also been enhanced. In addition to generating Word or HTML project documentation that includes models, reports, TOC, headers/footers and pagination, documents can be organized in chapters, objects within HTML models can be used to navigate throughout your document, and there are built-in Index and Search capabilities.

Calendarized resource scheduling and the ability to use empirical data files has been added to the simulator, AnalyzerPlus. This allows you to run process simulations using actual data values to more accurately reflect the true execution of your processes. WebVision now contains new intuitive navigation views, search capabilities at the notebook level, and a customizable zoom feature. For more information, contact Proforma www.proformacorp.com; info@proformacorp.com; or 248 356-9775.

To increase its Asia-Pacific presence, Popkin has signed a new licensing agreement with Prologic, a prime distributor in Australia for more than 10 years. Under the new agreement, Melbourne-based Prologic is providing product sales, technical support, consulting and training for Popkin under the name Popkin Pacific. Prologic's territory has been expanded to include Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines and other parts of Asia. Prologic held its first Popkin User Group meeting in November 2002.

"Like Europe, Australia is also seeing a significant jump in enterprise architecture and modeling projects, especially in government," said Jan Popkin, Popkin Software's CEO. "This agreement enables us to incorporate the continued success of Prologic with the strong reputation of Popkin in Australia into a single entity. This foundation will enable Popkin Pacific to strengthen its local sales and support as well as extend the Popkin presence into new markets." For more information and details about the new offices, check www.popkin.com

For more information on this announcement, check with Hain Communications at mary@hainpr.com

At the beginning of December, IBM announced that it would acquire Rational Software for $2.1 billion in cash. Rational Software has a diversified suite of software tools that assist software developers in the analysis, design, generation and testing of software code. Rational is best known for its Rational Rose product, the dominant UML modeling environment, for its support of Java, and for the fact that three methodologists, Grady Booch, James Rumbach and Iver Jacobson created UML in the first place. Rational has been earning about $600 million a year and has 3,400 employees and has been profitable for some time. Like most high tech companies, its stock was low and that made it cheaper for IBM.

There are lots of rumors about exactly why IBM is investing in business process and software modeling tools at this time, but the bottom line is that IBM is now a major player in both markets.

For more information on this announcement, check with Hain Communications at mary@hainpr.com

For more information, check www.popkin.com