2009-11-09 15:12:04 -

COLUMBUS, OH -- (Marketwire) -- 11/09/09 -- Sterling Commerce : , an AT&T Inc company, today announced that it has been named a Leader by Forrester Research in its October 29, 2009 report, The Forrester Wave(TM): B2B Service Providers, Q4 2009 : . The company's business-to-business (B2B) services included in the report were Sterling Collaboration Network : , a hosted service that provides secure connectivity and collaboration between businesses, and Sterling Commerce Managed Services : , a B2B outsourcing offering.



Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of 12 key B2B service providers in an 85-criteria evaluation across three categories: Current Offering, Strategy, and Market Presence. Sterling Commerce received the highest score in the Strategy category. The Strategy criteria assessed "each vendor's breadth of current features, the strength of its product road map, the quality of its strategic technology partnerships, its global reach, and its ability to support multiple delivery models."



"Our positioning in this report demonstrates our long-standing position as a leader in the B2B integration market," said Raghav Keshav, vice president of Product Management, Sterling Commerce. "We consider B2B services to be an important part Sterling Business Integration Suite : , our holistic approach to integrating business processes across our customers' collaboration networks. With this Suite, Sterling Commerce has gained recognition from the analyst community as a leader in B2B gateway software, managed file transfer : (MFT), and integration as a service.
No other provider in this report can claim that they are a leader in all these areas."



The report, written by Ken Vollmer, also references that B2B service providers are playing a role as part of a comprehensive integration strategy. It states, "The individual components of the newer integration solutions include B2Bi, EAI, BPM, service-oriented architecture (SOA), and MFT in pre-integrated stacks that minimize initial installation and ongoing maintenance issues. B2B service providers are one alternative for obtaining these new solutions, with the other main alternatives being integration-centric business process management suites (IC-BPMS) and B2B gateway software products. Comprehensive integration solutions will be a crucial element needed to support increased enterprise agility over the next five years."



Sterling Collaboration Network and Sterling Commerce Managed Services enable the secure and seamless execution of multi-enterprise business processes with 100 percent of a company's business community to improve business agility, operational efficiency, and business performance. They are part of Sterling Business Integration Suite, an end-to-end integration solution that addresses the critical challenges of B2B integration : , MFT, and enterprise integration that enables companies to optimize their business collaboration network -- the ecosystem of customers, partners and suppliers with whom they do business.



About Sterling Commerce


Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) company, helps companies optimize and transform their Business Collaboration Network : to accelerate revenues and reduce costs. Sterling Commerce provides more than 30,000 customers worldwide applications : and integration solutions : to connect, communicate and collaborate inside and outside their enterprise. More information can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com : .
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For more information, contact:
Julie Redard
Sterling Commerce
(978) 513-6386
Julie_Redard@stercomm.com :

Jamie Leicht
Fleishman-Hillard
(619) 237-7711
jamiemarie.leicht@fleishman.com :