By combining Sterling Commerce financial services solutions with the companies' regional expertise, business focus and experience in payment systems, these partnerships provide Sterling Commerce with a strong platform to deliver flexible and customer-focused solutions to end-users in these markets.

Allied Engineering Group's territory spans more than 40 countries, and Alliance Factors' territory covers 13 countries. Together with the partnership with Perago Africa, Sterling Commerce expertise now spans more than 75 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, delivering additional value to the SWIFT member community through continued investment and expansion in established and emerging markets.

Sterling Commerce and Allied Engineering Group see a significant opportunity to provide Middle Eastern and African organizations with solutions to integrate, automate, secure and manage the exchange of financial and payment information. Allied Engineering Group is a leading provider of financial infrastructure services and a SWIFT Business Partner, Service Partner and Solutions Partner for the Middle East, Africa and Cyprus. Sterling Commerce and Alliance Factors are partnering to support the growing demand in Russia/CIS and Mongolia. Alliance Factors, also a SWIFT Business and Service partner, offers integration middleware and straight through processing (STP) solutions.

Sterling Commerce, celebrating its fifth year of SWIFT partnership status this year, offers a unique combination of network, community management and market-leading, multi-enterprise collaboration infrastructure solutions to help financial services organizations to optimize and integrate business processes within their enterprise and among their trading communities.

"The partnerships with Alliance Factors and Allied Engineering Group build on the existing relationship between Sterling Commerce and SWIFT to provide comprehensive solutions to the financial services industry," said Michele Carvalho, director of business partners for Sterling Commerce. "With these two new partners, Sterling Commerce continues to execute on its growth strategy to deliver solutions for the financial services industry. Both companies are well positioned in this territory and business area to deliver these solutions at optimal value for our customers."

"Through the partnership with Sterling Commerce, Alliance Factors will be able to extend its solution offering to our existing customer base and unlock new business opportunities based on the Sterling Commerce solution set," said Alexander Kousheversky, director of sales and business development for Alliance Factors. "In Sterling Commerce, we see a partner with a proven track record of providing industry-leading products and solutions to financial services customers worldwide. This fits perfectly with Alliance Factors' vision to provide financial system solutions within the larger financial services market."

"Sterling Commerce has a long-standing reputation as a company with the vision and expertise to provide industry-approved solutions to solve complex business challenges," said Dr. Mohamed Sadek of Allied Engineering Group. "Our partnership with Sterling Commerce presents a powerful proposition on which we can further build and extend our own experience to deliver additional value to our customers as well as exploit new business opportunities."