Sterling Commerce Delivers New Architecture

MESA builds upon this growth strategy by delivering, for the first time, a multi-enterprise, comprehensive architecture that goes beyond traditional business-to-business (B2B) integration, Web services and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) to extend the value of service-oriented architectures (SOAs) outside the enterprise with unparalleled security, scalability and performance capabilities. With MESA, companies can securely bring together data, applications, people, processes and business communities through four key services: Business Integration Services, Business Intelligence Services, Business Process Management Services and Business Delivery Services. Also, by partnering with Entrust, Sterling Commerce offers customers a Secure Commerce Foundation built for the multi-enterprise environment that extends features such as identity management, encryption and authentication across these critical services. MESA is a standards-based, multi-enterprise service-oriented architecture that supports established business processes for unmatched visibility and control over business communities. This architecture is delivered in pre-packaged, on-demand or custom services suites. MESA delivers both horizontal and vertical solutions. The horizontal solutions will consist of a Network and Exchange Services Layer enabled by Sterling Information Broker, and a Secure Commerce Foundation, enabled by the partnership with Entrust. Additional MESA services include: -- Business Integration Services -- MESA unifies heterogeneous applications and processes by spanning all B2B network and data transport protocols, connecting any enterprise application or data source, and supporting industry standard data formats as well as proprietary data. -- Business Process Management Services - MESA automates processes based on rules to support security requirements, business processes and user accessibility. -- Business Intelligence Services - MESA delivers business reports and commerce visibility information to enable timely decision-making and community management. -- Business Delivery Services - MESA is equipped with tools such as management dashboards, community portals and user interfaces that summarize information in a way that makes sense for the user, organization or business community. In addition, it supports a federated environment by combining data from multiple, heterogeneous data sources in real time. For vertical markets, Sterling Commerce will offer industry-specific suites combining these various components tailored to the business requirements of the retail, financial services, manufacturing and healthcare industries. The core functionality in MESA is available today. Customized suites for vertical market deployments are expected in 2005.