Southport Services Group and Carpio Solutions Form Strategic Partnership

Southport becomes reseller of Carpio's GesFin Planning software and the firms will partner on dual-shore delivery of BI and CPM projects

Herndon, VA and Cary, NC -- June 10, 2008 -- Southport Services Group, a leading provider of business intelligence (BI) consulting services, and Carpio, a global provider of corporate performance management (CPM) and BI solutions, announce that Southport Services Group has become an authorized reseller of Carpio's GesFin Planning Suite and will expand its service offerings to include CPM projects.  As part of the partnership, the firms will partner and collaborate on large scale BI and CPM projects using a dual-shore delivery model that combines Southport's US based expertise and project management leadership with Carpio's dual-shore delivery capacity and infrastructure in Brazil, Panama, and Mexico.      

Large scale BI and CPM projects are now mission critical business initiatives for most U.S. businesses and they are demanding both world class software and professional services at the lowest possible cost.  Gartner estimates the size of the BI and CPM markets to be $7 billion and $3 billion respectively by 2011.   In addition, Gartner predicts that offshore spending this year by U.S. companies will grow 40% and in Europe by 60%.  Two of Carpio's dual-shore resource locations are in Brazil and Mexico, which are both on Gartner's list of top 7 IT offshore locations in the Americas.  The partnership between Southport and Carpio positions both companies to meet the combined market demands of BI, CPM, and dual-shore project delivery.

"Carpio's GesFin Planning application is state of the art in CPM and provides tight integration with MicroStrategy, Microsoft, and SAP platforms.   This provides us with a new product and service delivery specialty which complements our BI expertise.  CPM is now being requested by many of our largest BI customers," said Jim Butz, Southport co-founder and principal.  "Carpio's BI service delivery centers in Latin America provide us with new delivery capacity at lower costs, allowing us to pass on the savings to our customers."

"We are excited to join forces with Southport - they have deep U.S. based expertise delivering large scale BI solutions and will increase our U.S. sales and delivery footprint.  The combination of our joint U.S. resources and Carpio's dual-shore resource centers in Latin America will provide customers with a strong center of expertise for both BI and CPM based solutions at the best value," adds Marco Fregenal, chief executive officer of Carpio.

Southport Services Group and Carpio have agreed to engage in co-marketing and co-delivery initiatives within their respective client bases.     

About Southport Services Group

Southport Services Group is a management and IT consulting company specializing in enterprise business intelligence.  Southport offers a full-range of consulting services that help our customers design, develop and deploy business intelligence solutions that convert data into actionable information.  For more information, please visit www.southportsg.com.

About Carpio

Carpio is a global provider of corporate performance management (CPM) and business intelligence (BI) solutions headquartered in Research Triangle Park, NC with operations in USA, Brazil, Mexico and Panama.  Carpio is focused on delivering operational and financial efficiencies through its specialized software and service offerings. Carpio's CPM software products improve budgeting, planning, forecasting, modeling, consolidation, and reporting.  Carpio also provides a wide range of IT services including custom solution development and enterprise resource planning (ERP) via its dual-shore delivery approach to implement the highest quality solutions at the lowest possible cost.  For more information, please visit www.carpio.com.

Southport Services Group Contact:                                                                                                                  Carpio Contact:          

Lee Mayfield                                                                                                                                                             Grace Ueng     

Southport Services Group                                                                                                                                        Savvy Marketing Group

703.548.1344                                                                                                                                                            919.319.8538                

lmayfield@southportsg.com                                                                                                                                      grace@savvymarketinggroup.com