(Savannah, GA. September 25, 2003) – The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the leading industry Association for IT support professionals, today announced the finalists for the 14th annual STAR Awards. Chosen as the best in what they do, companies delivering technical support for service and support customers will be recognized and awarded the highest honors in their industry at the SSPA Conference@Savannah, September 29-October 1, 2003 in Savannah, Georgia.

“This year’s STAR Award finalists are all exceptional companies that deliver world-class support,” said Bill Rose, SSPA Founder/CEO. “This industry-wide recognition is unlike any other because a panel of their peers have evaluated each company application and determined that they deliver the best service possible.”

All SSPA Member companies are eligible to nominate themselves in any number of the categories -- Sustained Performance; High Call Volume; Most Improved; Complex Support Applications; Outsource Support Provider; Innovative Support; Mission Critical Support: Emerging Company and Support Technology Vendor.. SSPA provides each Applicant with an electronic application as a benchmark/guideline. The STAR Award Applicants take this task very seriously and spend a considerable amount of time on this arduous, but rewarding process. Many non-winners have said that, even though they did not win an Award, the whole process was well worth the time and effort. They indicate they learned a lot from the process and were able to discover in what areas they can use improvement.

The finalists for the 2003 STAR Awards include:

Advanced Solutions International
Aspen Technology
CompuCom
EMC Corporation
Expertcity
Hewlett-Packard
Invensys-The Foxboro Company
Lawson Software
LEGATO Systems
Mercury Interactive
Microsoft Business Solutions
Microsoft Customer Central
McKesson Corporation Horizons Clinical Solutions
Motive
Primus Knowledge Solutions
Schlumberger-GeoQuest;
The Reynolds & Reynolds Company
Timberline Software
Trend Micro
Wonderware

SPECIAL RECOGNITION- HALL OF FAME- LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS
SSPA has established a STAR Awards Hall of Fame, Life Time Achievement Award. This is awarded to companies that have won 5 STAR Awards since the inception of the Awards in 1990.
Any company that has reached this pinnacle will be awarded the SSPA STAR Hall of Fame Award.

Five Companies have previously been the recipients of this Award:
* Best Software * Mentor Graphics Corporation * Software AG * Stream International * Sykes Enterprises

About SSPA
Founded in 1989, the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) was formed to focus on the specific needs of service executives who are responsible for support centers and overall customer relations. Today, the SSPA represents over 21,600 service professionals at 2,500 support centers worldwide. These executives look to SSPA to provide insight into the future of support services, a road map of best practices within our industry and access to the best service and support vendors. SSPA has become the center of support providing a reliable and comprehensive resource for news, research, benchmarking, standards and collaboration.

SSPA was created for professionals, managers and executives that make their living in the IT support services community. It is not a generic, one-size-fits all website where nobody ever feels like they belong. SSPA is dynamic, interactive, living resource specifically designed for the unique needs of support professionals. This exciting virtual community creates a forum for constant interaction with peers, industry experts, technology vendors and much more. For more information regarding the SSPA and other related divisions, log on to www.thesspa.com or send an email to info@thesspa.com.