Candle Corp is targeting the junction between workflow and legacy systems by making its integration software interoperable with the workflow products of UK workflow software developer Staffware Plc. Staffware will provide technical support and make some software accessible to the Santa Monica, California company. Roma Workflow Access is the provisional name for Candle’s integration tool for making workflow systems function more effectively with companies’ other IT systems.
So far, the deal is only a technological development partnership although John Knutson, product manager for Candle’s Roma Workflow Access, says that the two companies are currently in talks about distribution. Candle is hoping to tap the workflow market of IBM MQ Series customers estimated at between 3,000 and 5,000 systems. The market is mainly made up of finance clients, but manufacturing and retail are also significant sectors.
Roma is also interoperable with Microsoft MQ, which is distributed free with Microsoft’s Windows NT 4. Although the MS MQ market is probably less than a hundred systems, Knutson is confident that it is a future pool with the promise of a far larger installed base. Staffware software reduces complexity, Knutson claims, in the way workflow systems function. At the moment, he explains, the flow logic governing the direction or steps involved in a payment system, for example, is held either embedded in the application, or in the brains of certain people who know by experience which steps to take in response to certain situations.
The Staffware product extracts the flow logic and displays it using graphical tools in a visible way to make it more comprehensible. The business process is easier to change, because the code is not concealed in the application, and the application development is simpler because the workflow element has been taken out.
Candle plans to show the Roma Workflow Access product at Staffware’s International conference in London in September. It will trial the software at selected customers in October and says it will make the product commercially available by the end of the year.
