New award for modeling sponsored by Sparx Systems supports standards education and development across Europe.

Creswick, Australia, July 13, 2010 – Sparx Systems ( www.sparxsystems.com), a leading vendor of modeling tools based on open standards, today announced its sponsorship of the inaugural CEN/TC 287 Award for Academic Excellence within INSPIRE (Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community). This award will promote academic excellence within the European geospatial community, specifically in development and deployment of interoperability standards. It provides an industry acknowledgement of the outstanding efforts of students and their mentors in this area of geomatics. The award was announced at the INSPIRE Conference 2010 in Kraków, Poland, and will be presented at the INSPIRE meeting in 2011 in Scotland.

Enterprise Architect, Sparx Systems’ flagship UML modeling platform is increasingly used by the global geospatial community for the development of industry reference models and to enable data interoperability. This adoption trend follows decisions by key organizations to use Enterprise Architect to model and maintain their interoperability standards. Through support of the CEN/TC 287 in Europe, Sparx Systems ensures that INSPIRE members, who use the CEN/TC 287 standards, have improved access to Sparx Systems technology.

Ken Harkin, Business Development Manager at Sparx Systems said, “We look forward to working with the CEN/TC 287, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) and INSPIRE members on the important task of promoting standards education and the use of standards within the European geospatial community." The establishment of INSPIRE, a legal act of the European Council and Parliament, regulates the sharing of environmental spatial information among public sector organizations and improves the facilitation of public access to spatial information across Europe.

“This CEN/TC 287 Award for Academic Excellence is welcomed at a time when the geospatial industry is collectively looking at the important issue of community education and training and demonstrates the ongoing commitment of Sparx Systems to the growing geospatial sector,” said Paul Smits who leads the group within the JRC that is developing the INSPIRE legal acts and guidelines. These address metadata, network services, and interoperability of spatial data and spatial data services. “JRC has chosen Enterprise Architect to develop and maintain the UML models of the INSPIRE data specifications, and this award will provide a focus and added incentive to INSPIRE members to deploy the technology for standards education and training and facilitates broader community adoption.”

CEN/TC 287 develops new standards, specifications and profiles of standards that underpin INSPIRE implementing rules as they become available. “We are delighted that Sparx Systems supports community education in this way” commented Martin Ford, Secretary of the CEN. “Not only does this collaboration support the core aims of the CEN/TC 287 and our sister standards organizations, but those individuals and groups within INSPIRE who are respectively developing and encouraging careers in geomatics.”

Members of INSPIRE who intend to contribute submissions for this award will have access to Enterprise Architect licences through participation in the Sparx Systems Academic licence program, which can be accessed at http://www.sparxsystems.com/solutions/academic.html

About Sparx Systems
Sparx Systems ( www.sparxsystems.com) specializes in high performance and scalable visual modeling tools for the planning, design and construction of software intensive systems.

With customers in industries ranging from aerospace and automotive engineering to finance, defense, government, entertainment and telecommunications, Sparx Systems is a leading vendor of innovative solutions based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and its related specifications. A Contributing Member of the Object Management Group (OMG), Sparx Systems is committed to realizing the potential of model-driven development based on open standards.

The company’s flagship product, Enterprise Architect, has received numerous accolades since its commercial release in August, 2000. Now at version 8, Enterprise Architect is the design tool of choice for over 200,000 registered users world-wide.

About CEN
The European Comité Européen de Normalisation (CEN) is a business facilitator in Europe, removing trade barriers for European industry and consumers. Its mission is to foster the European economy in global trading, the welfare of European citizens and the environment. Through its services it provides a platform for the development of European Standards and other technical specifications. CEN is a major provider of European Standards and technical specifications. It is the only recognized European organization according to Directive 98/34/EC for the planning, drafting and adoption of European Standards in all areas of economic activity with the exception of electrotechnology (CENELEC) and telecommunication (ETSI). CEN's 31 National Members work together to develop voluntary European Standards (ENs).

About JRC
The mission of the Spatial Data Infrastructures Unit is to coordinate the scientific and technical development of the European Directive INSPIRE, support its implementation, and lead research towards the next generation environmental information infrastructures at European and Global level. Being one of the key pieces of legislation in European environmental policies, INSPIRE delivers integrated spatial information services to its users. These services should allow the users to identify and access spatial information from a wide range of sources, from the local to the global level, in an inter-operable way and for a variety of uses. The target users of INSPIRE include policy-makers at European, national and local level and the citizen.

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Sparx Systems Pty Ltd
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