Sarbanes-Oxley Mandate for Corporate Accountability Includes IT Controls

Visible's enterprise solutions will enable companies to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, specifically section 404, IT controls.

LEXINGTON, MA - April 20, 2004 -- - Sarbanes-Oxley legislation represents a federal mandate for change in the areas of corporate accountability, control, audit, and reporting. And the enterprise systems running most NYSE, NASDAQ, and other publicly traded companies, which are the lifeblood of typical American corporations, can be the best means for enforcing Sarbanes-Oxley legislation. With the help of Visible Systems' technology, it becomes possible to achieve both engineering excellence and robust corporate governance throughout an organization and/or enterprise.

A corporation can only accommodate the rigors of Sarbanes-Oxley legislation if the architecture of both the company and its processes are explicitly defined. Thus, Visible's universal models, which make applications "visible," can form the bedrock for IT governance.

Visible Systems recognizes that at the heart of every enterprise model, there exist universal meta-models that exist ubiquitously, as the life-blood of global enterprises. Some of the world's most famous information engineers have devoted years of their lives to define the set of universal meta-models that consistently incorporate best-practice system architecture for world-class companies. With this conceptual technology, enterprise architects can derive an entire enterprise model in conjunction with universal templates.

Consistent with corporate imperatives to pictorially define the essence of world-class organizations, Visible created the Zachman Enterprise Workbench. This Zachman software can contain all 50 universal meta-models in addition to the design models specifically inherent to a client organization. Thereby the essential architecture of an entire business entity can be graphically designed, manipulated, and stored with complete simplicity. Thus, a critical step, of defining enterprise processes for Sarbanes-Oxley, can be easily achieved.

By focusing on process chains, Visible can address the core competencies and value-added activities inherent to a corporation. Further, the Zachman technology is applicable to legacy applications, new development, and planned future systems. Thus, this technology addresses past, present, and future dynamics of the IT paradigm

For corporations that do not have their process chains defined in models, the Zachman Workbench can define data models directly from specific database definitions. This reverse-engineering facility permits IT-architects to capture the business logic of key legacy system applications. In summary, Visible's Zachman technology permits executives a window through which the scenic view of their enterprise can be seen in both perspective and detail.

For corporations that are currently developing software, Visible's Zachman technology can support the entire analysis, design, development, and maintenance phases. Further, our logically integrated enterprise architecture solution graphically defines software development to add more accountability and control. Right out of the box, the Zachman toolset saves enormous time with planning, documentation, and infrastructure.

Further, Visible's consistent use of Zachman ideology throughout its product suite ensures a timeless relevance to the entire software support environment, far into the foreseeable future. Just as the Zachman ideology could have been used to build the pyramids, its importance will persist well beyond this millennium. Thus, Visible supports Sarbanes-Oxley with a universality that remains unsurpassed in the industry.


Visible's Chairman, George Cagliuso, has the motto that "a picture is worth one thousand words" and he lets the enterprise pictures inherent in his Zachman Enterprise Workbench speak loud and clear. He adds, "What better way to support Sarbanes-Oxley than providing accurate integrated pictures to management, streamlining the software development process, and facilitating detailed audit and control features"?

To further support the Zachman ideology, Visible offers enterprise life cycle management software. Razor and Polaris life cycle products provide for systems integrity directly at all levels of change. These products feature change management for the open systems and Microsoft worlds that directly support the auditing and control features of Sarbanes-Oxley. Consistent business and engineering discipline can be strictly defined and enforced by these products.

Whether it is the launch of the NASA space shuttle, or launching the missiles of America's undersea attack submarines, or insuring the robustness of Fortune-500 accounting systems, Visible's enterprise solutions can mean a vast step forward towards Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. In a word, Visible defines integrity in the world of software systems by making applications visible.

Additional compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley and Zachman ideology rests with Visible's Workbench, which facilitates model driven code generation that provides both an audit trail of accountability and graphical design control and embodies a major breakthrough in logically integrated-design, code generation, and code maintenance. (Ninety-five percent of the code gets automatically generated.)

Unique to the Zachman Enterprise Workbenches' code generation process, is the code generator's ability to both generate executable code and do application maintenance directly from the code generation interface. Thus, the idealized goal of generating code and performing maintenance from engineering specifications depicted in pictures, illustrates the entirely feasible, which is being done by Visible customers at this very time.

Another enterprise product in the Visible arsenal of software documentation, control, and workflow products, named LCSIS (Life Cycle Support and Information System), can be used to document and define precision documentation workflows, consistent with Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. It provides a standard for IT-audit and controls across multiple dimensions of the enterprise. Further, it can provide the glue to unite multiple organization functions.

Clearly, one of the big challenges for large companies rests with their outstanding "islands of automation." Normally, they possess a large amalgamation of disparate legacy applications. With Zachman technology and LCSIS, bridging the gap becomes possible. Islands can be united in common meta-models with achieved clarity and integration.

Consistent with Sarbanes-Oxley, corporations must think of a newer way to design systems in order to assist architects who must facilitate past, present, and future applications, ideally on one application back-plane. With the help of Visible's products, Sarbanes-Oxley can be addressed by a logically integrated suite of products that assist the organization to achieve the next level, and facilitate modern conceptual foundations.

Subsequent thought must be given to section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. This section, entitled "Internal Control Reporting Requirements", highlights a rigorous set of guidelines for information content, flow, accountability, audit, control, and decision-making. Only with a comprehensive product as robust as Visible's Zachman Enterprise Workbench could a task of Section 404's magnitude, be adequately addressed.

In summation, Visible's Zachman family of enterprise solutions embodies a rigorous commitment to standards compliance, Zachman philosophy, and provide the engineering foundations upon which can rest a corporation's commitment to Sarbanes-Oxley. Visible not only provides these enterprise solutions; but it supports world class engineering disciplines directed at excellence, ethics, accountability, audit, and management control. All of this can become a competitive weapon for the company that executes on the core technological foundation.

About Visible Systems Corporation (www.visiblesystemscorp.com)

Headquartered in Lexington, MA, Visible offers end-to-end, model-based solutions for developing and managing large-scale software and database applications. Visible has over 100,000 users of its products worldwide. Besides Visible Analyst, the company's products include: Visible Advantage, an enterprise architecture planning and development tool; Visible Developer, a powerful software code generation tool that supports multiple .NET software application initiatives; Razor, a tool that supports integrated software configuration management; and Razor LCSIS, an Enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) tool. A growing list of Visible customers include AEA Technology, AT&T, BAE Systems, Boeing, Booz, Allen, & Hamilton, Computer Sciences Corporation, DASA Daimler-Benz Aerospace, Eagle Systems Inc., Federal Aviation Administration, Foster Miller, General Dynamics, Integral Systems, Johnson Space Center, Lockheed Martin, Los Alamos National Labs, Motorola, NASA - Kennedy Space Center, NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center, Naval Air Warfare Center, Naval Surface Warfare Center, Naval Undersea Warfare Center, National Security Agency, National Severe Storms Lab, NLX Corporation, NOAA, Northrop Grumman Information Technology, Orbital Science, Raytheon E-Systems, Robins Air Force Base, SAIC, Sandia National Laboratories, Social Security Administration, Sensis, Shell, Seagate Technology, State of Arizona, Tundra Semiconductors and the US Navy Coastal System Station.

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