Singapore (4 Oct 2005) - In line with a major initiative by the Singapore government to facilitate speedy and secure exchange of information between agencies, Ecquaria, a leading provider of software infrastructure solutions to governments and large organizations and an associate company of Singapore main board listed Frontline Technologies Corporation Ltd, today announced the official launch of the ACRA Web Services Gateway (Web Services Gateway), a robust and secure gateway for the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore’s (ACRA) online business filing system which connects seamlessly to the Government Web Services Exchange (GWS-Xchange).
 
This announcement is made in conjunction with the IDA ‘Web Services – Realizing Economic Benefits and Enabling B2B Integration’ event held at the Marina Mandarin on 4th October.  ACRA will be speaking as a guest speaker and as part of an interactive panel discussion at the event to share its experiences in its Web Services conceptualization and implementation journey.
 
Today’s Web Services Gateway launch puts ACRA at the forefront of Web Services deployment in Singapore as ACRA is one of the first key government bodies to harness the potential of Web Services to provide better service delivery to both citizens and businesses by way of timely delivery of data and information.
 
ACRA’s Web Services Gateway is designed, built and implemented on Ecquaria’s flagship product, the Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™, (Ecquaria SOP™), a standards-based service-oriented architecture harnessing a process-oriented framework that helps ACRA develop and streamline the deployment of a set of query-based Web Services, commonly requested by Service Consumers from both the public and private sectors.
 
Powered by the Ecquaria SOP™ Business Process Engine, the Web Services Gateway is designed and implemented as a single query engine that can retrieve any of the set of common query-based  Web Services data in a Web Service call.
 
Principal examples of the set of common query-based Web Services are those related to online verification of company and business registration number, retrieval of company and business status information, queries pertaining to company and business data services as well as the retrieval of company and business profiles, financial and capital information, business owners and shareholders particulars etc.
 
Along with these newly developed query-based Web Services, ACRA’s BizFile online business filing services are also readily integrated and available to consumers of Web Services such as government ministries, agencies and commercial users connected to the GWS-Xchange, which serves as a de facto broker which allows these parties in the business value chain to rapidly deploy, publish and consume each other’s Web Services.
 
With the help of Ecquaria SOP™ technology, the Web Services Gateway is built to comply with the government’s best security practices, architecture and policy. In addition, ACRA is empowered to transact with all parties in the GWS-Xchange business value chain with a greater degree of transparency and certainty with regards to their committed service levels to Web Services partners and consumers.
 
Leveraging on the Ecquaria SOP™ built-in real-time Key Performance Indicator (KPI) intelligence and monitoring capabilities, the Web Services Gateway provides full service transaction logging, recording and reporting capabilities that allows the ACRA administrator to perform audit trails at critical phases of the application, thereby bringing new levels of service efficiency and governance in relation to public service delivery.
 
“We believe Web Services is a powerful technology enabler for governments and organizations to build and offer value added customer-centric eServices which further extends the return on their existing IT infrastructure investments and crucially, leverage on their organization’s data and information pool,” said Daniel Long, Deputy CEO of Ecquaria.
 
“Ecquaria can help government agencies bridge the business and technological divide with efficient Web Services implementation and in transforming and empowering users to achieve measurable service levels for greater service value creation in public service delivery. We are privileged to have enabled ACRA to further improve its service delivery and quality to users and customers by way of Web Services,” he added.
 
Besides facilitating the implementation of the Web Services Gateway, Ecquaria SOP™ has provided ACRA an extensible platform that allows ease of addition and deployment of new Web Services without significant added costs or technology investments. 
 
Ecquaria is a pioneer in incorporating Web Services technology into a single software product. The homegrown software enterprise is also a forerunner and a founding member of the OASIS Technical Committee and the Web Services Alliance.
 

SiTF-NYP SOA Centre
In conjunction with today’s announcement, Ecquaria is pleased to announce that it is a contributing partner to the launch of the SiTF-NYP SOA Centre which is held alongside the IDA Web Services event.
 
The SOA Centre is part of the initiative by the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) Web Services Chapter and Nanyang Polytechnic to steer a high level conception of a vendor-neutral Interoperability Centre.


About Ecquaria Technologies
Ecquaria is a leading enterprise business platform provider and an associate company of Frontline Technologies Corporation Limited. Unique in the industry, Ecquaria has pioneered a simple and effective way to provide software integration and new application development all in one single, integrated enterprise business platform. Based on a service-oriented model and Business Performance Management capabilities, the Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™ (Ecquaria SOP™) offers a comprehensive business platform to deliver a secure, scalable and reliable process-driven infrastructure for all the enterprise’s applications. Ecquaria strives to help customers put in place business processes that are integrated end-to-end across the enterprise and with key partners, vendors and customers.
 
These processes can be reviewed easily by managers, who can respond with flexibility and speed. Offering enterprise-class capabilities, Ecquaria SOP™ enables the enterprise to automate its business processes and provide an efficiently integrated information flow throughout the organization. While providing critical and complete information across the enterprise, Ecquaria SOP™ supports key business objectives to help the enterprise to manage all aspects of its business. Ecquaria is established with offices in Singapore, China, as well as an expanding network of global partners in ASEAN, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mexico and Africa to support the activities of customers worldwide.

More information is available at www.ecquaria.com.
 
 
About Frontline Technologies Corporation Ltd
Frontline Technologies Corporation Ltd is a leading provider of end-to-end IT services that include IT consulting, IT infrastructure, system integration and outsourcing. We are a regional corporation with a strong presence in six countries (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, China and India) in Asia and a combined talent pool of over 3,000 staff.
 
Established in 1993, we serve a wide base of customers in the transportation and logistics, telecommunications, financial services, education, manufacturing, healthcare and public sectors. We have been listed on the Main board of the Singapore Exchange since March 2001, and are ranked in the top 5% of the Corporate Transparency Index (CTI) in Singapore.
 
For more information, please visit www.frontline.com.sg