Sonata signs a Multi-year Outsourcing contract with Church's Chicken

Sonata signs a Multi-year Outsourcing contract with Church's Chicken ™
-To assist US-based fast-food major with total IT management
Bangalore (India), January 18, 2006

Sonata Software (Sonata) announced today that it has signed a deal with Atlanta-based Church's ChickenT. According to the company release, Sonata will provide complete outsourcing services to Church's, including remote infrastructure management, network and data center management, helpdesk and application management. The $5 million deal, spread over five years, will enable Church's to lower its IT outsourcing costs substantially and improve the quality of customer service, in a very competitive and dynamic industry that requires fast and reliable IT support.

Employing over 35,000 people, Church's ChickenT is the fourth largest chicken franchise organization in the United States. The company serves customers with over 1500 locations in 16 countries, with 283 company-owned restaurants, 955 domestic franchises, and 292 international franchise restaurants. Known for its southern style fried-chicken, the company plans to grow to 2500 restaurants by the year 2010.

"We have found the right partner in Sonata to manage our internal IT needs. We evaluated some of the global IT majors, but chose Sonata once we realized they approached our needs with deep technical skills, top management commitment and dedication. The fast food business is a dynamic industry, but based on our initial experience, Sonata has amazed us with its understanding of our business and what it takes to get the job done. Sonata will be instrumental in ensuring that we serve our customers with a variety of great flavorful products in a fast and friendly manner." said Harsha Agadi, Chief Executive Officer at Church's.

B. Ramaswamy, President & MD of Sonata Software, added, "We consider Church's as another milestone in Sonata's strategy of being an end-to-end services provider for enterprises. With Church's we needed to demonstrate a quick understanding of their unique business needs, and we were able to show just that. I see this partnership growing to make a decisive impact in transforming Church's IT infrastructure."

"Partnering with Sonata enables our IT department to adapt and respond quickly to meet our aggressive growth plans. With Sonata, we are able to consolidate and seamlessly integrate our infrastructure on a high performance platform, while improving our IT business processes to move closer to our vision of IT at Church's Chicken" said Alan Stukalsky, Chief Information Officer for Church's.

About Church's Chicken:
Founded in San Antonio, Texas in 1952, Church's ChickenT is one of the largest quick service chicken concepts in the world. Church's ChickenT serves traditional southern and spicy fried chicken. Focused on offering complete meals with large portions at low prices, Church's is positioned as the value leader in the chicken QSR category. As of December 2004, the Church's system had 1,556 locations worldwide in 16 countries, including Puerto Rico, with system sales in excess of $950 million. Church's ChickenT also operates under "Texas Chicken" in some of its international markets.

Church's ChickenT is owned by Arcapita, a venture-capital firm that is also the parent of Caribou Coffee. For further information, please visit www.churchs.com

About Sonata
Sonata provides IT consulting and software services to Global 2000 clients and ISVs through a proven global delivery model. Sonata's services focus on business intelligence, ERP/SCM/CRM implementations, enterprise application integration, application development, application management & re-platforming and infrastructure management.

For further information, please visit www.sonata-software.com

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.