Software AG, a global leader in business infrastructure software, today announced that it has been awarded SWIFTReady Financial EAI Gold Certification for 2008, SWIFT’s highest level of certification for interoperability. More than 8,500 financial institutions in over 200 countries and territories rely upon this validation from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) to ensure reliable, secure and assured messaging between member institutions. The announcement was made at SIBOS 2008, one of the world’s largest and most important financial services conferences and exhibitions, where Software AG has a leading presence.

New criteria being assessed this year for the SWIFTReady Financial EAI Gold Certification included adherence with current SWIFTNet MX message formats, support for the FTA file transfer interface to the SWIFTAlliance Gateway, and the ability of the BICPlusIBAN directory to directly support Single European Payment Area (SEPA) initiatives.

“We continually reassess and update our standards and protocols to reflect both the growth in messaging as well as the new demands that our members are placing upon the network,” said Eric Meirlaen, EAI Industry Analyst, SWIFT. “Meeting these standards requires an ongoing commitment to leadership in serving the SWIFT community. We’re pleased to announce that Software AG has once again been recognized for achieving our highest level of certification.”

Software AG serves over five hundred financial services institutions globally, including many of the world’s largest and fastest growing banks. These organizations trust the webMethods for SWIFT solution to deliver immediate, out-of-the-box support for real-time, interactive message exchange via SWIFTNet Interact and file transfer via SWIFTNet FileAct. Key features of webMethods for SWIFT include intuitive transformation tools, embedded data dictionaries and validators, real-time performance monitoring, integrated exception handling, and automated archiving of inbound and outbound messages.

The webMethods for SWIFT solution is based upon the webMethods ESB, an award-winning, standards-based enterprise service bus (ESB) solution. In addition to SWIFT, the webMethods ESB offers proven support for a number of other key industry standards, including SOAP 1.2, MTOM/XOP, JMS, WS Security and WS-I. This ensures that financial institutions can standardized on the webMethods for SWIFT solution for all of their integration and interoperability requirements – inter-application, intra-bank and with external partners – without sacrificing the proven reliability, scalability and security that the webMethods ESB is known for.

Software AG at SIBOS 2008: At-a-Glance
SIBOS 2008, occurring this week in Vienna, Austria and produced annually by SWIFT, is one of the world’s largest forums for the financial services sector. As a strategic partner to this sector with over five hundred enterprise customers, Software AG will be showcasing its capabilities and customer successes at the company’s SIBOS 2008 booth (C418), including:

webMethods Payments Monitoring solution – A proven, comprehensive solution that automatically monitors payments transactions for compliance with regulatory requirements and customer service level agreements (SLAs).
webMethods Payments Processing Framework – An enterprise-class model that banks can use to streamline straight-through processing, automate exception handling, and monitor transactions to meet service level commitments and reduce payments processing costs.
The webMethods suite – Encompassing best-in-class technology for application modernization, business integration, service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM), Software AG’s SWIFT-compliant webMethods Suite helps banks integrate, automate and improve critical business processes.
webMethods Application Modernization for Banking – The webMethods Application Modernization suite transforms core banking systems into modern and flexible business applications and processes while avoiding costly and risky rip-and-replace strategies. Instead, it simply extends the applications that banks are already familiar with.
In addition, Software AG partner SYRACOM AG will be showcasing at the booth their newly introduced PINQ solution for automating exception and investigation management of SWIFT-based transactions.

“Since the company’s founding, Software AG has been a leader in meeting the demanding requirements of the financial services sector and this continues to be true today,” said Ivo Totev, Chief Marketing Officer, Software AG. “By combining world-class technology with nearly forty years of hand’s on financial services experience and strict adherence to industry standards, we help our customers ‘get there faster’. For example, ABN Amro was recently recognized as the ‘Project of the Year’ within the U.K. for their use of our technology to create their London Message Hub. This type of innovation is critical to their business and this type of success is achievable by all of our customers.”

Software AG | Uhlandstraße 12 | 64297 Darmstadt | Germany
Software AG is the world’s largest independent provider of Business Infrastructure Software. Our 4,000 global enterprise customers achieve business results faster by modernizing, integrating and automating their IT systems and processes. As a result, they rapidly build measurable business value and meet changing business demands. Based on our solutions, organizations are able to liberate and govern their data, systems, applications, processes and services – achieving new levels of business flexibility.
Our leading product portfolio includes solutions for high performance data management, developing and modernizing applications, enabling service-oriented architecture, and improving business processes. By combining our technology with industry expertise and best practices experience, our customers improve and differentiate their businesses – faster.
Software AG has almost 40 years of global IT experience and over 3,600 employees serving customers in 70 countries. The company is headquartered in Germany and listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (TecDAX, ISIN DE 0003304002 / SOW). Software AG posted total revenues of €621 million in 2007.

Software AG – Get There Faster
www.softwareag.com