Sterling Commerce Broadens SaaS Offerings with Industry’s First Comprehensive Selling and Fulfillment Solution in the Cloud

Dallas, Texas – Sterling Commerce Customer Connection – April 13, 2010 –Through delivery of software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies, Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) company, is leveraging the cloud to deliver new value to customers looking to take advantage of the economic up-turn.  In support of this effort, the company is introducing “as-a-Service” offerings of its market-leading Sterling Order Management and Sterling Multi-Channel Selling.  With these applications, the entire Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite, a collaborative supply chain solution for managing the entire inquiry-to-cash process, is now available in the cloud.

“Our cloud strategy is at the heart of what we’re sharing with customers this week at Customer Connection 2010,” said Ken Ramoutar, vice president, Product and Industry Marketing, at Sterling Commerce.  “While Sterling Commerce has been offering cloud- based solutions for more than a decade, more and more customers are now seeing the business benefit of implementing a cloud computing strategy that helps them optimize capabilities while managing cost.  Accordingly, we are expanding our offering to customers, giving them the broadest choice in how they define, deploy and extend our solutions to provide flexibility and the ability to quickly deliver ROI.”

Though roughly half of the company’s solutions are already available in the cloud, the company is broadening deployment choices for customers by making its cloud offerings more comprehensive across the entire product portfolio to enable fast deployment, lower startup costs, and reduced use of internal information technology (IT) resources.  The company has mitigated the barriers that have kept organizations from implementing cloud solutions that include security, privacy and availability through its proven ability to securely and rapidly deliver as-a-Service offerings to global companies.  The company’s cloud strategy delivers two options: 

• On-demand solutions are hosted by Sterling Commerce and enable customers to configure the solution to meet their specific business requirements and consume them on a pay-for-use basis, or subscription model. 
• Managed services solutions also are hosted by Sterling Commerce, but provide greater flexibility and control to the customer in how they extend and customize the solution and manage upgrades, availability and access to their users. 

A recent survey by Forrester Consulting commissioned by Sterling Commerce investigated options around deployment, pricing and functionality.  The study found, “Today’s landscape is heavily on-premises; 68% of firms use on-premises solutions exclusively for supply chain and/or integration.  And fewer than half of firms said that deployment model made their top five selection criteria.  But when asked about future plans, 63% of supply chain technology buyers and 64% of integration solutions purchases said they are likely to adopt SaaS in the future.” (“Driving Business Value Through Choice,” by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Sterling Commerce, March 2010)

Sterling Multi-Channel Selling (MCS) and Sterling Order Management as-a-Service extends the Sterling Selling and Fulfillment Suite offerings for transportation management and supply chain visibility already in the cloud.  Sterling MCS allows companies to create a consistent, unified buying experience across all sales channels – mobile, web, store, call center and field sales. Sterling Order Management orchestrates global order and service fulfillment across the extended enterprise to help companies improve cross-channel optimization and customer responsiveness.  By offering these solutions as-a-Service, Sterling Commerce enables companies to be more agile in capitalizing on the opportunities emerging in optimizing the inquiry-to-cash process, especially to address the peaks and valleys in the commerce cycle such as the holidays. 

Delivering Sterling Business Integration Suite, an end-to-end solution that addresses the critical challenges of B2B integration and secure managed file transfer, in the cloud helps companies reduce their IT burden and respond to customer and market demands more quickly.  Currently, the company offers Sterling Collaboration Network, a hosted service that provides secure connectivity and collaboration between businesses, and Sterling Commerce B2B Managed Services, in the cloud.  Sterling Commerce Managed Services is a hosted B2B integration platform that takes both responsibility for and provides on-demand access to the B2B infrastructure, business process visibility tools and community development resources. 

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE:T) company, helps companies optimize and transform their Business Collaboration Network to accelerate revenues and reduce costs.  Sterling Commerce provides more than 18,000 customers worldwide with applications and integration solutions to connect, communicate and collaborate inside and outside their enterprise.  More information can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.

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