Sonic Software, the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB), and an operating unit of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), today introduces Sonic ESB® 7.0, the foundation of Sonic’s ESB product family. Sonic ESB 7.0 delivers a new Eclipse-based workbench that dramatically accelerates modeling, configuration, testing and deployment of SOA projects across large-scale, distributed environments. Sonic ESB 7.0 also introduces a fully reliable and continuously available implementation of the key advanced Web services standards critical for enterprise-grade SOA.

Eclipse-based Workbench

The new Eclipse-based Sonic Workbench™ 7.0 streamlines the SOA project lifecycle with four integrated modules:

· Process Modeling—streamlines collaboration between business analysts, architects and SOA developers using a visual, drag-and-drop pallet and standards-based business process notation; · Configuration—enables SOA architects and developers to create services and implement ESB process flows across a distributed topology; · Testing & Debugging—Sonic Workbench 7.0 provides the ability to test and debug ESB processes on the desktop, in test environments, and in live, distributed deployments. Sonic delivers the first ESB Process Debugger, allowing developers to view and debug a process executing across multiple, distributed services as if it is running on a single machine. Sonic also enables step-through debugging of distributed process as they execute within a live deployment, without disrupting ongoing processes; · Deployment—Sonic Workbench 7.0 reduces the risk associated with managing change in sophisticated SOA environments by providing dependency and impact analysis to determine the artifacts associated with any given change and reduce unintended effects to other services and processes.

“Configuring, testing, debugging and deploying processes that run across multiple services, machines and locations is one of the most challenging aspects of an ESB project. The new Sonic Workbench allows these often fragmented processes to be viewed and managed as if they’re running on a single machine—an industry first,” said Gordon Van Huizen, managing director and vice president of products for Sonic Software. “Of course, tools and UIs are only as good as the underlying infrastructure—this is where Sonic ESB 7.0 really shines. We’ve delivered the industry leading implementation of advanced Web services.”

Advanced Web Services

Sonic ESB 7.0 provides a state-of-the-art implementation of key advanced Web services standards for secure and reliable communication between
services: WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-Addressing, WS-Security and WS-Policy. The first ESB to support all four of these critical standards, the Sonic ESB Multi-protocol Communication Broker (MCB) provides a truly enterprise-grade implementation of advanced Web services standards with dynamic throughput capacity, continuous availability and dynamic routing across wide-area networks.

Product Availability

Sonic ESB 7.0 will be generally available on April 17, 2006.

Go to http://www.sonicsoftware.com/ESB7 for more information and product specifications. Sonic Software will host “An Introduction to Sonic ESB 7.0” Webinar on Wednesday, April 26th.

About Sonic Software

Sonic Software is the inventor and leading provider of the enterprise service bus (ESB), a new communication and integration infrastructure that supports the enterprise requirements of a service-oriented architecture (SOA). Sonic’s technology delivers the scalability, security, continuous availability and management capabilities necessary to connect, integrate and control distributed, mission critical business processes. Over 1,000 customers use Sonic products to achieve broad-scale interoperability of IT systems and the flexibility to adapt these systems to ever-changing business needs.

Sonic Software is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation
(Nasdaq: PRGS), a global software industry leader. Headquartered in Bedford, Mass., Sonic Software can be reached on the Web at http://www.sonicsoftware.com, or by phone in the UK on .

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Sonic ESB, Sonic Orchestration Server, Sonic XML Server, Sonic Integration Workbench, Sonic Business Integration Suite and Sonic Software (and design) are registered trademarks of Sonic Software Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.