Sophie is open source software for writing, reading and visualizing rich media documents in an interactive, networked environment. The program emerged from the desire to create an easy-to-use application that would allow authors to combine text, images, video, and sound quickly and simply, but with precision and sophistication. Sophie's users are interested in creating robust, elegant, networked, texts and multimedia works without having programming knowledge or training in the use of more complex and costly tools. such as Flash.

Sophie was initially designed and developed by the Institute for the Future of the Book. The University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts assumed sponsorship of Sophie 1.0 and, with a generous grant from the The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, has significantly revised and improved a new 2.0 version that was released on December 11, 2009. The Sophie project is being developed by Astea Solutions AD and additional contributors using a Java code base contributed to the project by Astea Solutions.

The Mellon Foundation is one of the world's largest grant awarding not-for-profit organizations focused on education and scholarly research. It provides grants in six areas: Higher Education and Scholarship; Scholarly Communications; Research in Information Technology; Museums and Art Conservation; Performing Arts; and, Conservation and the Environment.

Located in Los Angeles, USC is one of the world's leading private research universities. Founded in 1880, USC today has a student body of 33,500. USC's School of Cinematic Arts, internationally recognized as the top academic film, television, and new media program, will be Astea Solutions' principal collaborator on Sophie, providing project oversight and evangelism leadership within the global academic community.

Astea Solutions designs and develops proprietary and open source software products for global markets in the electronic publishing field. The company works closely with Sofia University's Faculty for Mathematics and Informatics and Laboratory for Interactive Multimedia. The oldest higher education institution in Bulgaria, Sofia University is also the country's largest with 14,000 students. Bulgaria is internationally recognized as a source of highly qualified technical talent and many of the United States and Europe's leading technology companies have opened substantial research and development centers in Bulgaria.

Astea Solutions also provides a full spectrum of bespoke rich Internet media application development services including custom programming, testing, graphic design, technical documentation, and turnkey systems. Much of its service work involves companies and projects in online publishing and distribution. Founded in 2007, Astea Solutions is headquartered in Sofia, Bulgaria and maintains marketing offices in New York City and San Francisco.