The Baltimore, Maryland-based company claims it is releasing the most business user friendly version to date of its namesake BPM suite that manages human and system integration-driven business processes.
Included in the 7.5 release are new tools for creating and managing collaborative work environments and allowing users to access the suite’s process management capabilities through corporate portals applications.
The functional upgrades can be categorized as in three buckets: empowerment, productivity and collaboration enhancements.
Greater empowerment is achieved through easier access to external web services components as part of overall process flow design tasks for SOA-based applications environments.
Metastorm has added wizard-like tools to the Insight process intelligence module to streamline the creation of custom reports and analysis on process information. Metastorm introduced Insight three years ago and plans to extend the software’s reporting and dashboard capabilities to incorporate and scorecard technologies and external baseline metrics, including industry best practices, key performance indicators, and target benchmarks that can be linked directly to Metastorm BPM processes. This will enable organizations to close the gap between high-level strategic objectives and lower level process/business execution.
To enhance productivity Metastorm has introduced a new Microsoft Office client interface that lets users stay in their familiar Word, Excel and PowerPoint environments when accessing and designing BPM information. The new interface builds on an existing interface built for Outlook that has now been updated for the Office 2007 release.
Metastorm has also announced support for Microsoft Windows and the Windows Workflow Foundation, a programming model, engine and set of tools for building workflow-enabled applications, to encourage broad deployment of users of Windows Vista’s desktop gadgets. Developers also benefit by being able to orchestrate workflows using the embedded designer tool in WWF.
To ensure better collaboration and communication between business units and teams on process design and data, Metastorm has also strengthened its support for Microsoft’s SharePoint Server and portals in 7.5.
Previously Metastorm provided a library of BPM Web Parts for SharePoint. Now developers can model processes using the WWF Process Designer in Office SharePoint Server 2007 and leverage SharePoint Content Services.
They can also now deploy Metastorm’s BPM components through any JSR168-compatible portal application, such as SAP Portal and Vignette.
Finally, version 7.5 also allows users to access third-party web service business catalogs and incorporate select services as part of Metastorm management processes both during design and run-time phases. They can also expose Metastorm processes as web services and publish them into external repositories or catalogs.
The release increases Metastorm’s reliance on Microsoft’s technology as an enabling infrastructure for defining, running, managing and analyzing business processes.
Metastorm is member of Microsoft’s Business Process Alliance, which is designed to bring together a number of third party BPM vendors whose products support and have integration with Microsoft platforms and applications. Metastorm’s BPM platform also integrates with Microsoft’s BizTalk 2006 process modeling and business rules server.
Greg Carter, CTO of Metastorm, explained that the underlying philosophy of the version 7.5 release was to tap Microsoft’s desktop tools to push BPM into the hands of more business users with an interface they know and use everyday via the 2007 Microsoft Office system.
By doing so we believe that will open up new avenues for collaboration and sharing via web services catalogs and portals.
Metastorm is privately-held and has around 1,300 customers worldwide. The company recently claimed its tenth quarter of profitable growth, with a 30% increase in license revenue.
