Investment in SOA Middleware Infrastructure Starts to Pay Off

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - August 2, 2007) - IT organizations that made the investment in SOA infrastructure such as ESBs, repositories, and registries, are significantly outperforming companies that develop only web services, according to a new benchmark report from Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS).

The report, "SOA Middleware Takes the Lead: Picking Up Where Web Services Leaves Off," is based on a survey of more than 150 organizations worldwide. In the study, best-in-class companies were twice as likely to have deployed SOA middleware as those that use only web services. Performance was measured in application development and maintenance costs, and in overall end-user satisfaction.

"IT organizations that are succeeding have realized that enterprise-level infrastructure investments are necessary," said Perry Donham, Aberdeen's director for enterprise applications research and the report's author. "Groups that are deploying applications in silos, even when those silos are a mix of web services and SOA, are suffering from the lack of an enterprise-wide messaging infrastructure."

The survey found that:

--  Companies that are deploying full SOA applications report a 90%
    improvement in end-user satisfaction, versus 15% of those using a mix of
    SOA and web services.
--  Agility, not cost, is the driving factor by a factor of two to one for
    best-in-class organizations that are working on legacy modernization
    projects.
    

A complimentary copy of this report is made available due in part by the following underwriters: Hitachi Consulting and BEA. To obtain a complimentary copy of the report, visit: http://www.aberdeen.com/link/sponsor.asp?cid=4100

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen is a leading provider of fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having benchmarked more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is uniquely positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen™ for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen http://www.aberdeen.com or call (617) 723-7890, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748 or go to http://www.harte-hanks.com.

© 2007 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company
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Contact Information: Media Contact: Perry Donham Aberdeen Harte-Hanks (617) 854-5315 perry.donham@aberdeen.com