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Independent Research Firm States Progress Actional is a "Threat to Competitors" in SOA Governance and Management Space

Apr 30, 2009
Independent Research Firm States Progress Actional is a "Threat to Competitors" in SOA Governance and Management SpaceBEDFORD, Mass., Apr 30, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS), a global provider of application infrastructure software used to develop, deploy, integrate and manage business applications, announced today that Current Analysis, an independent research firm, has stated that the Progress® Actional® 8.0 platform is a threat to its competitors. The recent product intelligence report, titled "Progress Actional 8.0 Brings Continuous Quality to SOA Management," says that the Actional 8.0 platform is the first Web services management (WSM) solution to incorporate continuous quality functionality.

Michael Meehan, senior analyst for Application Infrastructure at Current Analysis, commented: "Actional 8.0 marks a significant step in the maturation of the Web services management market into continuous quality assessment, well beyond the borders of basic Web services protocols. As a result, with the Actional 8.0 product, Progress is poised to make even more significant gains in the SOA governance and management space."

Recognizing the level of maturation and the demands of today's business critical applications, Actional 8.0 delivers business transaction assurance, ensuring that problems are discovered early and are simpler and less costly to fix. Specifically, this tool provides full design-time to run-time application lifecycle validation, and execution-time visibility and control for distributed applications, which allows IT professionals to collaborate across an enterprise to detect, diagnose, and repair problems and exceptions that disrupt business transactions, and prevent them from recurring.

The Current Analysis report evaluated the product for the SOA governance and management category and highlights the following Actional 8.0 platform strengths:

  • "Full comprehensive integration with Mindreef® testing and validation tools (that) infuse quality throughout the management process for Actional."
  • "Complete standalone SOA quality software folded into a unified package," which has not been done by any other vendor to date.


  • Extended management capabilities "well beyond SOAP-based Web services, something Progress is stressing with marketing around the concept of 'business transaction assurance.'"
  • "Upped the ante in terms of the depth of visibility available in the market."


These enhanced capabilities provide customers the ability to identify and correlate a single unique business transaction, providing a single view of every transaction point across every tier for each unique transaction. This enables the solution to apply policies on top of transaction logs, which creates a method to fine tune applications for regulatory compliance. Additionally, Actional 8.0 implements a collaborative real-time approach to exception management, where transaction failures can be located and diagnosed at the business level, then resolved, repaired and resubmitted for completion.

Dan Foody, vice president of Actional Products at Progress Software, said: "We're delighted that Current Analysis has acknowledged the market-leading capabilities of Actional 8.0. When developing Actional 8.0 and integrating the Mindreef capabilities, we sought to help companies address problems with the loss or delay of even a single high-value transaction, which can have a significant impact on the business in terms of lost revenue or reduced employee productivity. The Actional product not only helps businesses recognize and remediate these problems when they occur, but also proactively helps application teams avoid them early in the development lifecycle.

We're particularly pleased with the acknowledgement of Actional's ability to overcome this challenge, as Current Analysis aptly captures the strengths of the product and its competitive differentiation."

Actional 8.0 Enterprise integrates technologies from the Mindreef® SOAPscope® product, which was acquired by Progress Software in 2008, to provide award-winning Web services testing and SOA quality management solutions. Customers using Actional technology include Cablevision, Credit Suisse, IHG (InterContinental Hotel Group), Partners Healthcare, CH Robinson, Great American Insurance Company, McGraw Hill Companies, University of Phoenix, and many more.

About Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) provides application infrastructure software for the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. Our goal is to maximize the benefits of information technology while minimizing its complexity and total cost of ownership. Progress can be reached at www.progress.com or +1-781-280-4000.

Progress, Mindreef, SOAPscope and Actional are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE: Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation
Lisa Coulouris, 781-280-4995
lcoulour@progress.com
or
LEWIS PR
Rich Young, 617-226-8842
progresssoftware@lewispr.com