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Breaking News - Operating Systems & Middleware:

CRS Selects Sonic Software As Recommended Middleware

Sonic Software, a leader in distributed, standards-based integration, announced that CRS Retail Systems has selected the company's award-winning enterprise messaging server, SonicMQ, to be the recommended enterprise messaging provider for its CRS IntegrationFramework, a combination of .NET, XML Web Services and JMS-compliant messaging components that ensure real-time communication between its broad suite of retail software applications.

CRS Retail Systems provides retail store systems and enterprise applications to help retailers integrate a multi-channel retail enterprise in order to drive incremental sales and improve the customer shopping experience. CRS applications, for example, let retailers see real-time inventory availability across the entire enterprise, create and process sales orders between channels, and validate return/exchange transactions against original transaction data for sales processed that same day.

To enable these communications, the CRS IntegrationFramework comprises JMS-compliant messaging software and proprietary CRS components to link the CRS RetailStore POS, CRS EnterpriseSelling (formerly "Found Inventory and Order Management"), and CRS ReturnsManagement applications, as well as third party applications for e-commerce, warehouse management, or call center customer service.

With many standards-based enterprise messaging alternatives available, CRS selected SonicMQ to be its recommended JMS-compliant enterprise messaging provider for customers installing the CRS IntegrationFramework.

"In retail, providing sales associates with needed information right at their fingertips is a tremendous supplement to the training they receive," said Kathy Frommer, chief executive officer of CRS Retail Systems. "SonicMQ enables this capability in several of our applications and, by exceeding our requirements for performance and scalability, allows our retail customers to confidently expand their businesses with CRS Retail Suite applications."

The CRS IntegrationFramework links retail applications in real-time via the Internet or local network. Network performance constraints, however, can be acute during peak load conditions, such as the busy holiday and back-to- school seasons. Sonic's enterprise-class messaging system provides the store- to-headquarters and store-to-store communications backbone that ensures guaranteed message delivery so, regardless of network performance, CRS customers can be confident that sales orders, inventory updates, and other customer-centric data is reliable.

"By utilizing Sonic's enterprise-class messaging infrastructure, CRS has a proven foundation for its real-time applications and, at the same time, realizes significant savings in development costs and time-to-deployment," said Gordon Van Huizen, chief technology officer for Sonic Software. "SonicMQ enables high-speed, reliable and scalable communications between thousands of retail stores, multiple distribution centers and corporate offices. This makes it possible for CRS customers to stay ahead of the competition, drive sales, protect margins and improve customer service."