BEDFORD, Mass.----Progress Software Corporation NASDAQ: PRGS, a leading provider of application infrastructure software to develop, deploy, integrate and manage applications, today announced that two Progress Software customers have been recognized as Laureates by the Computerworld Honors Program. This year’s Honorees were commemorated during the 19th Annual Laureates Medal Ceremony & Gala Awards on June 4, 2007 at the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. For almost two decades, Computerworld Honors has acknowledged these individuals and organizations that have used information technology to benefit society.

The Computerworld Honors Program recognized among its Laureates Argentina’s Government of La Pampa Province and Boekhandels Groep Nederland BGN, a Dutch book retailer.

The Government of La Pampa’s IT organization leveraged Progress Software technology to manage a complete benefit database that tracks social program implementations. The program is aimed at optimizing resource allocation for families that cannot cover basic needs. The process begins with locally-collected socioeconomic surveys that allow the government to evaluate the average nuclear family’s social situation, and combine that information with data from health systems, housing programs, education, ID registration, pensions, and employment programs. The system calculates benefits and credits a Purchasing Card they are provided to obtain authorized products. It also simultaneously collects statistical information at the local levels to inform on changes in quality of life that the population experiences as a result of benefits programs.

Sergio Ziliotto, The Social Health Minister in The Government of La Pampa, Argentina, commented: “We developed this project without realizing how tough it was going to be from the operational perspective as well as monitoring the huge amount of feedback we received from the recipients of the new welfare support. However, we all understood the importance of his innovative project and the social impact across the country. We are very proud of the Computerworld honor and had no idea there would be this international recognition. We are especially thankful to Progress Software in Argentina, who supported our project and provided the very flexible application development tools and software necessary to meet our evolving needs.”

BGN, a Progress customer and the Netherlands’ largest book retailer, made a significant breakthrough in remote store automation with the deployment of the world’s first item-level RFID Radio Frequency Identification retail store. This deployment has generated dramatic labor savings, reduced their inventory reconciliation costs, improved stock control, enhanced visibility into their supply chain operations, increased shoppers ‘basket size’, and enriched their customer’s experience. BGN needed to exploit enabling technologies and embrace innovative processes that improved their operations and enriched their customer’s shopping experience within their “brick and mortar” stores in order to combat internet-based competition. BGN has since launched two new, fully -automated 'Smart Stores' that combine RFID tagging and SOA to deliver a tightly integrated 'warehouse-to-customer' supply chain, and continue to roll out their deployment across all their book stores.

“The key to our ongoing success is our ability to deliver an outstanding customer experience when a customer enters one of our stores,” said Jan Vink, IT Director for Boekhandels Groep Nederland. “Equally important for us is providing the tools to our marketing teams that allow them to better merchandise books. With infrastructure software, ESP event stream processing, SOA service oriented architecture and intelligent search applications from Progress, we have accomplished all of our business goals for this deployment. On top of that, we have built the world’s first, fully-automated item-level RFID tagged store. We would not have been able to achieve this pioneering step without the best-in-class products and innovative technology from Progress Software.”

“The selection of both BGN and the Government of La Pampa for this prestigious award clearly demonstrates that our technology is applicable in so many settings – whether it’s for helping to speed commerce or to deliver social benefits,” said Joseph Alsop, co-founder and chief executive officer of Progress Software. “We’re very pleased to be associated with these significant IT achievements.”

Annually, members of the Chairmen’s Committee, a group of 100 Chairman/CEOs of global technology companies, nominate individuals and organizations around the world whose visionary applications of information technology promote positive social and economic progress. Independent of the Laureate recognition, the Computerworld Honors Program also annually presents its Leadership Awards, each designed to honor the extraordinary achievements of selected individuals whose positive contributions to the IT revolution have left an indelible mark on the world.

“Each year, the Computerworld Honors Program seeks to recognize organizations, from a variety of sectors, for their ongoing efforts to utilize technology in order to benefit society,” said Ron Milton, Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Computerworld Information Technology Awards Foundation and Executive Vice President of Computerworld. “We are proud to provide a platform to publicly acknowledge the contributions of the honorees.”

About Computerworld

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About Progress Software Corporation

Progress Software Corporation NASDAQ: PRGS provides application infrastructure software for the development, deployment, integration and management of business applications. Our goal is to maximize the benefits of information technology while minimizing its complexity and total cost of ownership. Progress can be reached at www.progress.com or +1-781-280-4000.