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Among Many Benefits, Nucleus Research Finds that Expanded Reuse of Existing Services Reduces Project Cycle Time 25-45 Percent While Directly Supporting Key Business Objectives ATLANTA, Nov. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Integration World 2005 -- webMethods, Inc. (NASDAQ:WEBM), a leading business integration and optimization software company, today announced that a recently published, third-party report highlights the emerging best practices that enterprises are using to employ a service-oriented architecture (SOA) with webMethods Fabric(TM). According to the report, these enterprises are greatly enhancing their IT responsiveness and agility while realizing significant business benefits as a result. The analysis, ROI Evaluation Report: webMethods Fabric (November 2005), was produced by Nucleus Research, a global provider of IT research and advisory services, following interviews with a number of webMethods' customers. "Adopting a service-oriented architecture (SOA) enables companies to shorten IT project cycles, improve IT agility and better align their IT practices with overall company strategy while gaining tactical returns from integration," said Rebecca Wettemann, vice president, research, Nucleus Research. "Nucleus found customers adopting webMethods Fabric to support an SOA strategy were able to leverage IT alignment and agility to increase market share, build strategic partnerships, increase revenues and improve customer service." One of the principal business benefits reported by webMethods' users was the role that a service-oriented architecture played in growing top-line revenue as enterprises were able to improve the overall agility of their IT departments as well as their long-term alignment with line-of-business objectives. Among the examples cited, the report found that a retirement fund administrator was able to win significant business and achieve a number one market share position by successfully employing an SOA to streamline new customer acquisitions. Likewise, a technology distributor credited $200 million in incremental revenue growth to the use of webMethods Fabric, which allowed the company to rapidly fill the void left by another firm's exit of a key market. Among the best practices suggested by the report was the use of Integration Competency Centers to guide deployment as well as the need to work to ensure the company as a whole embraces relevant cultural changes. The report also highlights the important role that business activity monitoring (BAM) and business process management (BPM) can play in extending the value of a total SOA solution, such as with webMethods Fabric. Based on its interviews, Nucleus also found that companies were able to use an SOA-based approach to centralize and standardize IT practices, which produced: * Improved alignment of IT with changes in the business * Reductions to costs and cycle times of IT projects * Improved visibility on business activity * Identification and removal of inefficient or duplicative business processes * Improved IT culture Among specific examples, Nucleus found that 30 to 75 percent of enterprise-wide projects were enhanced by the reuse of existing services. As a result, enterprises were able to reduce the programming component of project cycle time between 25 and 45 percent. The report also highlighted the real-world implications of these findings as demonstrated by the process improvements recorded by various webMethods customers: * A bio-tech leader leveraged the webMethods platform to reengineer a number of core business processes. As a result, it was able to reduce custom product development time from 16 weeks to two and order fulfillment time from three weeks to less than five days. * A Fortune 500 manufacturer achieved similar reductions in order- processing time -- going from 14 days to five -- by providing third- party manufacturers with real-time visibility into incoming orders. * A large bank was able to eliminate manual processing of loan applications by bringing together a variety of services to automatically evaluate credit risk. From a competitive perspective, Nucleus found that webMethods Fabric offered several unique benefits -- beyond the depth and completeness of the offering -- that helped enable this performance. The solution was credited with using a common architecture to support both EAI and B2B integration, which meant that core business processes could be more easily extended to increasingly important, external trade partners. Also highlighted was the scope of interoperability offered by the solution with this out-of-the-box performance credited with speeding integration between disparate systems. Finally, webMethods Fabric was recognized for the extent in which it allowed users to leverage Web services with the company being credited as " ... particularly aggressive and agnostic in accommodating Web services standards." "The need to build the business case for SOA adoption and better understand the ROI that can be achieved as a result were recently cited by our users as the main inhibitors to more widespread deployment," said David Mitchell, president and CEO, webMethods, Inc. "This report helps address these concerns as it offers an extremely compelling depiction of the benefits that real enterprises are enjoying by using webMethods Fabric as the foundation of their SOA initiatives. Enterprises should use this research to benchmark their own commitments to SOA as it provides invaluable insight and lessons learned for maximizing their return on investment." The findings of this report will be discussed tomorrow at Integration World 2005, webMethods' annual user conference taking place this week in Atlanta. In addition, the final report is available via download by visiting http://www.webmethods.com/ROI4SOA. About webMethods, Inc. webMethods (NASDAQ:WEBM) provides business integration software to integrate, assemble and optimize available IT assets to drive business process productivity. webMethods delivers an innovative, enterprise-class business integration platform that incorporates proven integration technology with next generation capabilities into one interoperable set of tools that delivers a unique combination of efficiency, agility and control. webMethods combines industry leadership with a zealous commitment to customers to deliver tangible business value to more than 1,300 global customers. webMethods is headquartered in Fairfax, Va., with offices throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific and Japan. More information about the company can be found at http://www.webmethods.com/. The webMethods name and logo are registered trademarks of, and webMethods Fabric is a trademark of, webMethods, Inc. All other marks mentioned are trademarks or service marks of their respective companies. DATASOURCE: webMethods, Inc. CONTACT: John Conley, +1-703-980-8259, , or Brianna Boyle, +1-703-460-6034, , both of webMethods, Inc. Web site: http://www.webmethods.com/

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