chinadotcom corporation (CHINA) announced its Software Development Center in Shanghai successfully achieved Capability Maturity Model ("CMM") Level 4, an internationally recognized standard for software development, following its CMM Level 3 achievement in June last year.

After successfully progressing through and revisiting the already achieved key process areas ("KPAs") of software development for CMM Level 2 and 3 during the assessment process, the company's Shanghai Software Development

Center has satisfied the additional two KPAs required for CMM Level 4, which are Quantitative Process Management ("QPM") and the Software Quality Management ("SQM").

The purpose of the process-focused QPM is to control the process performance of the software project quantitatively while the purpose of product-focused SQM is to develop a quantitative understanding of the quality of software products and to achieve specific quality goals based on the needs of the organization, the customer and the end users.

James LaLonde, CEO of CDC Software, Asia Pacific, a software unit of chinadotcom corporation, said, "We are proud of this milestone that our China software development center has achieved. Moving from CMM Level 3 to Level 4 is a leap forward for our software development initiatives as it demonstrates our commitment to enhancing our R&D capabilities in the software sector in China, a strategic market with tremendous potential for our future growth and expansion of our software business in the long term."