Things are starting to pick up in the BPM Market. As summer fades into September, leading BPM vendors are making announcements around new upgrades and enhanced functionality to their BPM suites. One of the first companies out of the starting gate for the latest round is Metastorm, and it is announcing its latest version of e-Work, release 6.5, this week. Upside Research was given a sneak peek at the new functionality in e-Work 6.5, and believes that the changes will enable Metastorm to maintain its leadership position in the market, while offering customers and prospects alike several important new capabilities.
Metastorm e-Work 6.5 focuses on offering enhancements to several key areas of the BPM platform, including integration, reporting and analysis, and support for additional technologies and standards. Specifically, the following features will be available for e-Work 6.5:
Integration: Metastorm e-Work 6.5 will ship with an adapter kit for major secure messaging queues, including IBM, Microsoft, and Java
Reporting and Analysis: Metastorm has entered into an agreement with Hyperion, a leader in business intelligence, to OEM the company’s Hyperion Intelligence product, providing users with robust analysis and reporting functionality. Additionally, Metastorm has enhanced e-Work’s Business Activity Monitoring and Management capabilities by providing additional ability for mangers to drill down through the dashboards, and to more easily align performance with established KPIs.
Technology/Standard Support: The latest version of e-Work will extend its support for both the Microsoft environments as well as Java environments, enabling developers to choose between the Java SDK or Microsoft SDK for development. In addition, e-Work 6.5 now supports BPEL standard (both the consumption and generation of BPEL) and will offer Microsoft’s business rules engine as an OEMed product.
In addition to these capabilities, Metastorm has made navigation of the e-Work environment more seamless, by enabling users to move from module to module easily in an integrated fashion. The company is also bringing several new customers up on some of its pre-packaged process kits, most notably in the retail space.
Upside Uptake
Metastorm has been selling workflow and BPM solutions to global 2000 companies for several years, and as such is one of the more established companies in this market. With more than 700 customers worldwide, Metastorm has had particular success selling its solution to the government and legal industries, in addition to the financial services and retail and manufacturing markets.
Upside Research believes that the latest enhancements to Metastorm e-Work will allow it to continue as a leading competitor in the BPM market. The decision to partner with a leading intelligence tool such as Hyperion to provide analysis and reporting capabilities enhances Metastorm’s capabilities in an area that was previously lacking. Upside Research believes Metastorm made a smart decision to go outside for the functionality and continue to focus its in-house R&D efforts on the process side of BPM.
While the product has always been strong on the workflow and human interface side, the new release helps e-Work on the integration side. With its latest release, e-Work ships with adapter kits to the three major secure messaging queuing technologies, in addition to support for BPEL, the standard for BPM integration. The product is also more tightly integrated itself, making it easier for users to move from one module to the next. Metastorm’s recent closer partnership with Microsoft signals the ability of the company to meet its customer base’s needs by supporting all relevant standards. Though, keep in mind that organizations with a depth of integration-specific requirements will need to use third-party products (or the future bundled BizTalk), or consider a more EAI-focused toolset. Ultimately, Upside Research believes that this latest version of e-Work will help Metastorm maintain a leading role in the BPM marketplace.
