Actional Acceleration Series Educates Leading Organizations on SOA Best Practices

Company Packages Key Learnings into One Comprehensive Program for Deploying Scalable, Manageable and Secure SOA.

Bedford, MA — December 5, 2005 - Actional today announced that its Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Acceleration Series has benefited more than a dozen leading companies since the offering was first introduced in March, 2005. Designed as a vehicle for mentoring customers, the series shares best practices for planning, managing, and securing SOA and draws on Actional's experience in helping Fortune 500 customers migrate from traditional ways of developing and managing applications to a more service-based approach.

"We were aware of the tremendous value that a service-oriented architecture could bring, but wanted a better understanding of the major SOA planning considerations involved in developing a realistic strategy for migrating to a true SOA," said Rick Coleman, Director SW Development and Enterprise Architecture for Thomson Prometric. "Actional provided guidance and expertise we needed to scope and sequence our initial SOA efforts, and knowledge that helped educate implementation teams, reducing learning curves across our entire business."

Actional's CEO, Tom Ryan, said the demand for Actional's professional services has increased sharply as of late due to the fact that many companies have started down the path to SOA and need guidance to handle the myriad of issues that arise during the SOA lifecycle. Actional's SOA Acceleration Series helps customers avoid mistakes by providing decades of collective expertise and a forum for exchanging ideas and lessons learned with other professionals.

"Moving to an SOA was a well thought out, strategic decision for our organization, however employing SOA on an enterprise scale presented some challenges," said Coleman. "New roles and responsibilities had to be defined, new skills learned, and new relationships established. Actional's professional services helped us to understand needs in these areas, and allowed us to leverage their knowledge and successes."

Actional's SOA Acceleration Series features four core services, which include:

  • SOA Planning - Designed for those organizations preparing for the transition to SOA. The anchor points of this offering include real-world experiences, best practices, success cases and the introduction of Actional's methodology for a successful SOA implementation.
  • Architecting and Implementing SOA - Guides the SOA design and implementation team in phasing the SOA into the organization through a vendor-neutral approach to standards, hands-on techniques, best practices and typical deployment case studies.
  • Analyzing SOA Security Risks - Educates an organization's SOA team on the security concerns associated with most deployments and gives best practices guidance on a range of security topics for the non-security professional.
  • Best Practices for Strategic SOA Management and Ongoing Expansion - Provides an overview of Actional's unique SOA management technologies that can deliver end-to-end visibility into an organization's SOA.

"Having supported the implementation of numerous successful service engagements with Fortune 500 companies at the forefront of SOA adoption, Actional has developed a rich brain trust, which we are now making available to the market through more formalized offerings," said Ryan. "We feel packaging these key learnings into one comprehensive program is the most effective way to share our expertise with as many people as possible and help them avoid costly errors."

Interested parties can review up-to-date information on course planning and register for future programs by contacting www.actional.com. If you have questions or would like to reach an Actional spokesperson for comment, please contact Julie Tangen at 831.420.3511 or julie@kulesapr.com.

Availability and Pricing

Group courses are customized to customers' specific SOA initiative objectives and infrastructure.

About Actional

Actional's enterprise-class solutions address the critical challenges of securing, monitoring and managing SOA environments. Leveraging leading technology and services, customers achieve the end-to-end transaction visibility required for performance, Web services management and SLA adherence. Actional's proven solutions are designed for each stage of migration from Web services pilots to production SOA.

Actional are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its subsidiaries or affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

For more information:
Judy Mintz
Progress Software
Telephone: 781-280-4286
Email: jmintz@progress.com

Rich Young
LEWIS PR
Telephone: 617-226-8842
Email: richy@lewispr.com