Sterling Commerce Receives 2009 SWIFTReady Label for Financial EAI Solutions

COLUMBUS, OH--(Marketwire - July 7, 2009) - Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) company, today announced that Sterling Integrator 5.0 has been awarded the 2009 SWIFTReady label for Financial EAI (enterprise application integration). Announced in April 2009, Sterling Integrator 5.0 enables secure end-to-end management on a single platform of financial data exchange across business processes within an enterprise and among an enterprise and its business partners. Sterling Integrator is part of Sterling Business Integration Suite, a comprehensive set of solutions for all integration needs, inside and outside the enterprise.

This is the fourth consecutive year Sterling Integrator has received this annual certification, demonstrating Sterling Commerce's commitment to supporting the rigorous standards established by SWIFT for the global financial services market. SWIFT supplies standardized and secure messaging services to more than 8,300 financial institutions in 208 countries and territories. The SWIFTReady certification evaluates products based on their ability to provide SWIFT users with the technology and functionality required to manage financial data and fully integrate with the SWIFT community. In this year's certification, Sterling Integrator's superior capabilities in detecting and correctly defining validation errors were seen as significant in enabling improved straight-through processing levels, an important criterion in global financial management.

"Sterling Commerce continues to demonstrate its dedication to the global financial services community by meeting our evaluation criteria," said Eric Meirlaen, Solutions and Markets manager, SWIFT Partner Management. "Completing the certification so quickly illustrates the flexibility and ease-of-use of Sterling Integrator as well as the commitment from Sterling Commerce to this certification as a way to ensure the company meets the needs of its global customers."

"As organizations look to streamline the processing of financial transactions, support for global standards such as SWIFT is increasing in importance for both financial services organizations and their corporate clients," said Jim Gahagan, global industry executive, Financial Services for Sterling Commerce. "This trend has led to increased demand for a secure and reliable communications platform such as Sterling Integrator that can provide increased visibility into global financial data transmissions by centralizing control of all transmissions across multiple standards and protocols."

Financial services organizations are transforming their global inter-bank transactions with Sterling Integrator by reducing complexity and enabling real-time visibility over the high volumes of data transfers that many SWIFT member organizations execute each day. Sterling Integrator allows financial communities to transmit and share financial data in a secure, accurate, efficient and highly cost-effective way across diverse business processes, protocols and standards, on a single platform.

Corporations also are benefiting from the robust and flexible integration capabilities of Sterling Integrator. As more corporations expand globally to improve their financial position, they need to optimize and better manage their treasury operations across multiple financial institutions and in multiple countries. Sterling Integrator is helping these corporate customers to transform their treasury operations and fragmented IT environments into integrated, cost-effective solutions that drive operational efficiency.

Sterling Integrator 5.0 includes several new capabilities designed to help companies ensure their business processes are automated, streamlined, integrated and coordinated with those of their business partners. It adds Sterling Community Manager, a new capability that reduces the cost, resources and time involved in on-boarding and managing large and diverse trading partner communities. Sterling Community Manager helps companies reliably on-board, expand and manage their partner communities more quickly and accurately, and with fewer resources. In addition, new communications and security capabilities have been added to ensure companies can support the various requirements of their partners.

About Sterling Commerce

Sterling Commerce, an AT&T Inc (NYSE: T) company, helps companies optimize and transform their Business Collaboration Network to accelerate revenues and reduce costs. More than 30,000 customers worldwide use Sterling Commerce applications and integration solutions to connect, communicate and collaborate inside and outside their enterprise. More information can be found at www.sterlingcommerce.com.

Contact Information: For more information, contact: Julie Redard Sterling Commerce (978) 513-6386 Julie_Redard@stercomm.com Jamie Leicht Fleishman-Hillard (619) 237-7711 jamiemarie.leicht@fleishman.com