Sonata Software wins Microsoft's Asia Pacific Office Solutions contest

Sonata Software wins Microsoft's Asia Pacific Office Solutions contest
Indian Companies dazzle Asians with innovative "XP" solutions
New Delhi, 14th May, 2002

Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd., today announced the results of the recently concluded Microsoft Asia Productivity eXPerience Solutions Challenge (PESC). Sonata Software from India won the contest with its worXPace Portal, a productivity solution aimed at the FMCG vertical. The contest was aimed at Microsoft's ISV partners in the Asian region, providing them with an opportunity to test their skills and readiness for the emerging productivity solutions market. A total of 22 solutions had been created by participants across India and Asia using Microsoft's Office XP, Windows XP and SharePoint Portal Server products. The runners up were from Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Commenting on the contest, Sanjiv Mathur, Group Marketing Manager, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd. said, "Office XP is the perfect solutions platform for enterprises and we have always been committed to helping our customers and partners build solutions that are cost effective and leverage technologies that they are already familiar with." He adds, "The fantastic response for the PESC contest and Sonata winning the contest in particular, has convinced us that the Indian market is now ready for productivity based solutions and we definitely expect enterprise solutions to become more pervasive."

Sonata's worXPace framework enables the sales and marketing resources of a company with fast moving goods, to effectively collaborate with channel partners, speed up decision making process and improve operational excellence. Besides Sonata, two other Indian companies made it to the semi-finals stage, and these are Kshema Technologies Ltd and Omnikron Systems India Pvt. Ltd. The former has built a solution for the Pharmaceuticals industry, and the latter has built a solution for the Agricultural vertical, called AgriSysXP.

Microsoft will be working closely with the winners to help them market their solutions to target audiences.

About Office XP
Office XP is the latest version of Microsoft's popular productivity application suite and was launched the world over on May 31st 2001. Office is the second most popular development platform with over 2.6 million developers using Office for building workflow solutions. It offers organizations a flexible set of tools that integrate new technologies such as Smart Tags, XML support and SharePoint Team Services, allowing companies to quickly build and deploy business critical solutions.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software-any time, any place and on any device. Microsoft Corporation India Private Ltd is a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation USA. It has had a presence in India since 1990 and currently has offices in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Pune.

"Measured against the SEI CMM Model, the assessment concluded that Sonata Software Limited was performing at the Optimizing Level, (Level 5) and exhibited outstanding discipline in applying quality management practices to the software development process," according to Richard F Storch. " Sonata's dedicated employees are to be congratulated on having initiated and implemented an ongoing software process improvement that has such spectacular results. Sonata Software's accomplishment is significant. Sonata's customers can be assured that they are working with the one of the best providers of quality software solutions," added Richard.

About SEI & CMM
The Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense through the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology [OUSD (A&T)]. The SEI contract was competitively awarded to Carnegie Mellon University in December 1984. Technical and administrative professionals from government, industry and academia staff the Institute. The Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM or SW-CMM) is a model for judging the maturity of the software processes of an organization and for identifying the key practices that are required to increase the maturity of these processes. The Software CMM has become a de facto standard for assessing and improving software processes. Through the SW-CMM, the SEI and community have put in place an effective means for modeling, defining, and measuring the maturity of the processes used by software organizations.

About Sonata Software Ltd.
Sonata is a software house with a 15-year track record of successful performance in both the domestic and international markets. It offers development and consulting services in the areas of eCommerce, Enterprise Applications, Business Intelligence, Customer Relationship Management, Data warehousing, Legacy management, as well as specialised services for Software Product companies. Sonata has 6 regional offices in India and three offices in the US and the UK. Sonata has customers in 25 countries across North America, Europe and Asia. Sonata's Core Research Group, supported by alliances with Microsoft, IBM, CA and Oracle among others, enables seamless assimilation of new technologies for rapid benefit to clients. Sonata has been an ISO 9001 Tick-IT certified company since 1994. Sonata is an employee-oriented company, with 23% of the company being employee-owned.