OpenConnect Systems Partners with Proforma Corporation to Build Complete Lifecycle of Successful Business Process and Technology Collaboration

Mainframe-to-Web Specialist Joins Proforma's Consortium; Partnership Dovetails Business Process Analysis with Innovative Solution to Uncover Critical Processes

SOUTHFIELD, MICH. and DALLAS -- March 27, 2006 -- Proforma Corporation, the established leader in enterprise modeling, and OpenConnect Systems, Inc., delivering technology solutions that turn mainframe assets into business value, today announced that OpenConnect has joined Proforma's Common Interchange Format (CIF) Consortium. As a member of the recently established consortium, OpenConnect will utilize CIF to facilitate the exchange of key information between its soaSolution suite and Proforma's ProVision enterprise modeling suite.

As the growing global economy drives organizations to redeploy legacy applications as services, the partnership between Proforma and OpenConnect addresses the need to identify what candidate services a legacy application could provide, as well as what business processes those services could support. This collaboration will allow organizations that are integrating applications using OpenConnect's soaComprehend product to identify and rationalize candidate services against critical business processes.

"We are delighted OpenConnect has agreed to partner with Proforma to enable our customers to more effectively integrate technical and business artifacts under a service oriented architecture," said Jerry Huchzermeier, Proforma's CTO. "Successful SOA implementations are based upon a clear understanding of the business. That's why Proforma has introduced ProVision for SOA -- the first tool to deliver capabilities for defining service-ready activities to marry business processes to the services that make them work."

According to OpenConnect CEO Edward Peters, combining OpenConnect's soaComprehend solution with ProVision for SOA adds the until-now missing "discovery" component of successful business process management: Only through first identifying and discovering the critical business processes that drive an enterprise can decision-makers then move to make the proper and complete analysis of the technology systems driving those processes. With most critical applications still tied inexorably to mainframe systems, the Web service-enabling of mainframe-based information becomes a top priority.

"The key component of SOAs is the emphasis on creating services that mirror business processes," Peters said. "The OpenConnect partnership with Proforma enables us to create re-usable services in the discovery phase of the project. The use of business process discovery tools can greatly improve the quality of services, as well as greatly reduce costs for organizations."

Version 1.0 of CIF became available last summer, and Version 2.0 was released at the end of December. Members of the consortium have agreed to develop the CIF-based interfaces required to interoperate. Customer organizations using CIF can support full traceability between business processes definitions, the rules that manage them, the technical services forward-engineered to implement them, the legacy systems supporting those business processes, and the enterprise repositories that store vital information about those processes. As a result, CIF enables better process management and business agility.

In addition to OpenConnect, a wide range of providers are participating in the CIF consortium, including ACI, Appian, DST, Fuego, Fujitsu, Lombardi Software, Metastorm, Pegasystems, InRule and Trinity Millennium Group Inc. As members of the consortium, all these vendors have agreed to support CIF by developing the CIF translators required to interoperate.

To learn more about Proforma, the Common Interchange Format, and ProVision, call 888.789.6903, write to info@proformacorp.com, or visit www.proformacorp.com.

About Proforma Corporation
Proforma's enterprise modeling solutions enable effective visual collaboration for business and IT-- empowering the agile enterprise. The ProVision visual modeling environment provides modeling, analysis and simulation tools for all aspects of the enterprise, including strategy, business and technology. Using a model-driven approach, entire organizations can see and evaluate the impact of change and continually manage and deliver improved performance. With Proforma, global enterprises, government agencies, and systems integrators achieve success in business process analysis and management, service-oriented architecture, enterprise architecture, simulation, ITIL, requirements analysis, supply chain, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and Six Sigma. Know More. Do More.