According to this Gartner Magic Quadrant report published on March 31, 2009, and authored by L. Frank Kenney and Darryl C. Plummer: "SOA governance is about ensuring and validating that assets and artifacts within the architecture are operating as expected and maintaining a certain level of quality."

The Actional product family provides best-in-class policy-based validation, visibility, security and control for services, middleware and business processes. Recently, more than 20 new features were added to the Actional product family that allow businesses to better monitor and govern their interconnected services and applications.

The report continues: "Now in its second year, this Magic Quadrant reduces the market to one set of technologies with strong architectural cohesion (integration), promoting ease of use and the interoperability of products. This integration includes the idea that multiple personas will be involved in governing an SOA. Each of these personas will bring a different perspective to the process of performing different kinds of tasks. However, all these tasks must be part of a unified governance effort, instead of a different, but related, effort."

Going beyond traditional SOA governance, the Actional product family delivers 'business transaction assurance' by providing end-to-end monitoring, validation, and policy enforcement for distributed applications, from development through application support. With Actional, businesses can ensure the success of every single important business transaction.

Dan Foody, vice president of Actional Products, Progress Software commented: "We're delighted that Gartner has recognized the Progress Actional product family in this manner. As Gartner authors, Kenney and Plummer, state 'Customers and technology providers are putting more emphasis on SOA validation and monitoring; the latter is seen as critical to monitoring metrics and measuring success.' Actional best-in-class validation and monitoring capabilities are among the key capabilities used by the more than 500 Actional customers."

Customers using the Actional product family include Cablevision, Credit Suisse, Partners, and IHG (InterContinental Hotel Group). For more information on the Actional product family, please visit http://www.Actional.com/products/release-highlights/.

The Magic Quadrant by Gartner, Inc.

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2009 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

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 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.