Sterling Commerce approved as Swift Service Bureau

The relationship enables the company to offer a new SWIFTNet Service Bureau to corporations, which will provide Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) member banks with direct access to the 19,000-member Sterling Collaboration Network (SCN) community. The new Sterling Commerce Service Bureau, coupled with the company's leading Multi-Enterprise Finance Gateway (MEFG) (see related release, "Sterling Commerce Extends its Leadership in Addressing Industry Standards for Financial Collaboration"), will provide banks and their corporate customers with a complete end-to-end, SWIFTNet integration solution. This solution will facilitate not only message format standards, but also the secure, reliable, global transport of data between SWIFT-member banks and their corporate customers.

"We are pleased Sterling Commerce has extended its five-year partnership to include the SWIFTNet Service Bureau offering," said Luc Meurant, head of the Corporate Access Program at SWIFT. "This will more efficiently automate and simplify communications between our 8,000 members and Sterling's 19,000 corporate communities, without needing to deploy additional expertise, software or infrastructure investment."

"Last year, we announced MEFG as a collaborative gateway solution for payments and other bank-to-corporate communications," said Jim Gahagan, global industry executive, financial services for Sterling Commerce. "This year, we are further enabling that capability by providing corporate customers with direct connectivity to their banking partners via a SWIFTNet Service Bureau. By closing this bank-to-corporate gap via a single network connection, banks will be able to help their customers improve cash control with more efficient integration and matching of supply chain events with related financial transactions, and their corporate customers will maintain greater visibility and control of their supply networks."

Colin Kerr, senior analyst for the global payments research service at TowerGroup, said, "This is a significant step forward in linking the physical and financial supply chains, particularly for organizations of all sizes. Companies and banks alike will benefit from data translation and SWIFTNet connectivity services."

The first release of the new Sterling Commerce Service Bureau is targeted for general availability in the first quarter of 2008.

Sterling Commerce will be showcasing the Service Bureau offering and Sterling Multi-Enterprise Finance Gateway at Sibos, taking place from October 1-5 in Boston.