Contact Information:
Wendy Hynes
Text 100 for Actional
415.593.8444
wendyh@text100.com

Adam Gaber
Thomson Learning
203.425.1363
Adam.Gaber@Thomson.com

 THOMSON PROMETRIC SELECTS ACTIONAL
FOR WORLDWIDE WEB SERVICES IMPLEMENTATION

Web Services Management Platform Provides Leading Testing and Assessment Provider with Ability to Manage a Global Service-Oriented Architecture

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - April 19, 2004 - Actional Corporation, the Web services management market-share leader, today announced that Thomson Prometric, the leading worldwide provider of comprehensive technology-based testing and assessment services, has selected Actional's Web services management solution as part of a global initiative to implement a service-oriented application (SOA) environment. With Actional's Web services management platform, Thomson Prometric will be able to further improve responsiveness to customers, facilitate new product offerings and enhance business agility, while reducing the cost and burden associated with maintaining and integrating disparate application environments.

"As a result of corporate growth, which has occurred both organically and through acquisition, Thomson Prometric now has thousands of test centers located throughout the world. Coordinating and integrating those operations presents quite a challenge," said Christopher Crowhurst, Thomson Prometric's vice president of Enterprise Architecture. "We recognized the potential value of a service-oriented approach to our IT infrastructure, and Actional's Web services management platform is enabling us to successfully leverage this breakthrough technology. This in turn will help deliver tremendous cost and flexibility benefits to the organization, and make our customers' experience even more efficient, accurate and convenient across our global test center network."

As Thomson Prometric began to explore how to migrate from a monolithic application architecture to a service-based computing environment, they quickly realized that implementing a Web services management strategy to monitor and manage the SOA environment was critical to the success of the project. After an exhaustive evaluation process, Thomson Prometric chose Actional's Web services management platform due to its unmatched ability to deliver total visibility, flexibility and active control throughout the service network. Beyond its SOA expertise and quality support staff, Actional was chosen for its unique solution architecture, which supports Thomson Prometric's incremental implementation strategy and enables them to bring projects online in a logical progression without the need to build out the full management infrastructure from the outset.

"Given their industry leadership and focus on innovation, it comes as no surprise that Thomson Prometric is one of the innovative companies that is leveraging breakthroughs in technology and progressing towards the adoption of a service-oriented application environment that will enable them to move toward becoming a Dynamically Responsive organization," said Judith Hurwitz, president, Hurwitz & Associates. "By leveraging a Web services management platform, Thomson Prometric is poised to capture the full value that Web services can provide across its entire global network."

Web services provide flexibility to help IT departments adapt to rapidly changing business requirements. However, as Web services applications become more complex and migrate beyond the firewall, the need to reliably manage end-to-end communications is critical. With Actional's Web services management platform, Thomson will be able to proactively monitor its Web services performance and increase global service level agreement (SLA) compliance. Furthermore, Thomson Prometric is now able to obtain metric analysis for corporate initiatives, thus allowing the IT department to fully support Thomson's business goals.

"Many companies believe Web services and SOAs are important for building a technology infrastructure to help drive business agility, but few organizations are really comprehensive and proactive in their approach," said Frank Bergandi, CEO of Actional. "It is refreshing and exciting to see a company such as Thomson Prometric move beyond the theoretical and aggressively implement critical technological innovations such as Web services in a global and systematic fashion. Companies like Thomson Prometric will be the first beneficiaries of the cost and productivity gains that Web services offer." 

About The Thomson Corporation and Thomson Prometric
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), with 2003 revenues of $7.6 billion, is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers.  Thomson provides value-added information, software tools and applications to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate training and assessment, scientific research and healthcare.  With operational headquarters in Stamford, Conn., Thomson has approximately 39,000 employees and provides services in approximately 130 countries.  The Corporation's common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC). Its learning businesses and brands serve the needs of individuals, learning institutions, corporations and government agencies with products and services for both traditional and distributed learning.

Thomson Prometric (www.prometric.com) is the global leader in technology-enabled testing and assessment services for academic, professional, government, corporate and information technology markets.   Thomson Prometric delivers standardized tests for 300 clients, in 26 languages, over the Web or through a global network of testing centers in 134 countries. Based in Baltimore, Md., Thomson Prometric employs 3,000 employees worldwide.

About Actional
Actional is the Web services management market-share leader, committed to helping organizations avoid the cost and complexity of unmanaged Web services deployments. With proven experience at more than 100 Global 2000 customer sites, the company builds the management foundation required to harness the cost and performance benefits promised by Web services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA). Actional's solutions provide unmatched visibility, flexibility and active control across an enterprise Web services network - ensuring uptime while dramatically reducing the costs of ongoing Web services management. Actional is a privately held company headquartered in Mountain View, California. Contact Actional at www.actional.com.

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