SSPA Announces Winners of 2005 STAR Awards for Service Excellence and Inducts
One into Its Hall of Fame

ProQuest Business Solutions, Sage Software – Timberline Office, IBM Rochester Support Center, Oracle Corporation, Dell Enterprise Services and RSA Security Honored

( San Diego, CA — Wednesday, October 12, 2005) – The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the largest and most influential industry association for technology services companies, today announced the 2005 SSPA STAR Award for Service Excellence winners. SSPA STAR Awards provide peer recognition of excellence in eight unique categories.

The SSPA also announced its latest STAR Awards Hall of Fame inductee, Oracle Corporation. Hall of Fame induction is special recognition awarded to companies that have won five SSPA STAR Awards since the program inception in 1989. All winners were honored during a luncheon and awards ceremony Tuesday, October 11, during the SSPA bi-annual member conference in Las Vegas.

“We had an incredibly strong and impressive pool of award applicants this year.  Technology maintenance, service and support providers across categories continue to innovate and improve their capabilities to deliver world-class customer service,” said Bill Rose, SSPA Founder and Executive Director.  “This trend was reflected in the high caliber of applications we received and made judging a very formidable task.”

The 2005 STAR Awards winners by category are:

MOST IMPROVED – ProQuest Business Solutions
This award recognizes the company that demonstrated the greatest increase in the quality of their support over the past year. Key measurements included customer satisfaction improvements as well as support productivity.

HIGH CASE VOLUME – Sage Software – Timberline Office
This award recognizes service excellence at a support center with hundreds of support reps fielding thousands of technical assistance/customer support requests per day. The winner typically also supports a wide range of products.

SUSTAINED PERFORMANCE – IBM Rochester Support Center
This SSPA STAR Award goes to the support center that has proven they have sustained outstanding service and support with high customer satisfaction levels for at least three consecutive years.

INNOVATIVE SUPPORT – Oracle Corporation
The support center that wins this award has developed new, cutting-edge systems and processes for delivering exceptional technical support to their customers.

MISSION CRITICAL SUPPORT - Dell Enterprise Services
This award recognizes technical support that is a critical part of keeping customers “up and running” 24/7. The winner clearly demonstrated how important their technical support is to the operation of customers’ mission critical systems or services.

COMPLEX SUPPORT APPLICATIONS - RSA Security
This SSPA STAR Award winner delivers sophisticated technical support for complex applications in mixed or otherwise complex environments, typically engineering and scientific fields.

WEBSTAR SERVICE AWARD – Oracle Corporation
This SSPA STAR Award winner delivers sophisticated technical support for complex applications in mixed or otherwise complex environments, typically engineering and scientific fields.

Hall of Fame- Oracle Corporation
The SSPA STAR Award Hall of Fame Awards is a Lifetime Achievement Award that has been presented to only nine companies in the award’s history.

To learn more about the Service and Support Professionals Association and the SSPA STAR Awards for Service Excellence, contact:

Diane Brundage, SVP Marketing & Volume Operations
SSPA
(408) 354-7136
dbrundage@thesspa.com

About the SSPA
The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) is the leading advisory, community and education trade group for the global tech support industry. SSPA’s core constituents are the executives and managers responsible for service and support operations, and overall customer relations, at the world's leading IT companies. SSPA provides (1) research and expert analysis of emerging business issues, (2) conferences, professional development, and other curricula promoting industry best practices, (3) rigorous certification and awards programs that identify and celebrate exceptional customer service, and (4) active advocacy in the business and IT press on issues important to service & support providers.