Source: Tibco
TIBCO Software Inc. (NASDAQ:TIBX), a leading business integration and process management software company that enables real-time business, today announced general availability of TIBCO iProcess™ Suite, version 10.5. In addition to improvements in performance and scalability, TIBCO’s latest business process management (BPM) offering introduces real-time Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) capabilities enabling customers to avert problems and take advantage of opportunities.
Broken, inefficient and labor-intensive manual processes are often the root causes of unsatisfactory customer service and poor business performance. To compete effectively, organizations need to be more efficient and adaptable to market conditions, yet still comply with requisite controls and industry regulations. With the addition of TIBCO iProcess Insight, a wizard-based product, businesses can easily define key metrics and examine the status of in-flight processes. This benefit offers a unique view into processes by instantly leveraging dashboard insight to detect patterns, take corrective action and improve operations, such as claim management processes and trade exceptions.
"In the marketplace, momentum is gaining around better managing business processes. Organizations that have already completed several BPM initiatives are realizing significant productivity increases and want to do more. Because of this, naysayers will be forced to recognize BPM as a way to more directly link business with IT and reap the productivity gains in the process."[1]
TIBCO iProcess Suite, version 10.5 also provides enhanced usability features in its browser-based client that is built on TIBCO's Asynchronous, JavaScript and XML (AJAX) development framework. New graphical audit trail functionality provides users a simplified viewing of case histories for increased visibility and control. Additionally, users can take advantage of the advanced form-building capabilities offered via TIBCO General Interface to customize the look and feel of the Web interface and create custom forms.
Built on an open architecture, TIBCO iProcess Suite version 10.5 also delivers increased scalability and performance functionality. Highlights include:
Dynamic deadlines for greater flexibility and control in managing work queues;
Work queue performance and scalability enhancements to support a larger number of concurrent users;
Extended database support for Oracle Real AApplication Cluster (RAC) for Oracle 10G as well as Microsoft SQL Server 2005;
"Business processes are rarely static. They are constantly evolving based on market conditions, competitive pressures and customer requirements," said Jeff Kristick, senior director, Product Marketing, TIBCO Software. "Consequently, business activity monitoring has become an important part of the feedback loop in a process-driven enterprise. For many of TIBCO's customers, the business imperative is shifting from simply recognizing and reacting to unforeseen patterns and events to proactively detecting patterns and driving continuous process improvement."
Separately, TIBCO Software Inc. today announced that the latest generation of TIBCO Business StudioTM, version 1.1 is available for free. In addition, TIBCO will expand its community support for business process management (BPM) through open forums and communications to help non-technical users get the most out of their BPM implementations.
To date, commercially available process modeling environments have been too cost-prohibitive for most companies to invest in for non-technical users. The few made available for free are generally not standards compliant, have limited functionality, or do not fit into the current IT infrastructure. As a result, models built in these solutions cannot be executed easily and, in most cases, require significant re-work by IT to ensure compliance with the execution engine. TIBCO Business Studio, version 1.1 is the first fully functional, standards-based process modeling product tailor-made for business users offered at no cost. This eliminates a key barrier to entry by giving organizations an easy, low-risk way to get started with their BPM projects.
"Getting the model correct remains the biggest challenge in BPM implementations and how companies consume most of their time," said Michael James Melenovsky, Research Director focusing on business process management, Gartner, Inc. "Providing tools that are accessible and easy to use allows business users to spend more time refining models to improve their BPM implementations and less time learning new technologies."
In addition to the new pricing model, TIBCO will launch a community site to help both business users and analysts with their process modeling projects. Forums monitored by TIBCO engineers and practitioners will provide a place for users to share information with one another and gather insight from others doing similar implementations. Video tutorials will also be available to address common problems and guide users through to the solution - from modeling best practices to execution.
"Offering TIBCO Business Studio for free is a bold move that we think will help close the gap between business and technical users in BPM and encourage the broad adoption of a standards-based modeling environment," said Jeff Kirstick, senior director, Product Marketing, TIBCO Software. "Having a tool that caters to non-technical users will continue to drive innovation in BPM without weighing business users down with technical details. This, coupled with a community of like-minded users who can share experiences with one another, will bring BPM adoption to an entirely new level."
TIBCO Business Studio provides a more collaborative environment that allows business users to properly model, simulate and manage business processes. In addition, because TIBCO Business Studio is standards compliant, with support for BPMN and XPDL, it can easily implement the models business users create.
"TIBCO Business Studio provides the best quality BPM models by leveraging the know-how of those closest to the business processes without bogging them down with technical details," said Harm Scherpbier, M.D. product manager for Siemens Medical Solution's Soarian® health information solution. "In our experience, we've found that those with the most knowledge on business process and organizational pain-points often aren't able to contribute to BPM implementations due to technical hurdles. With TIBCO Business Studio we are able to remove these hurdles, empowering even non-technical users to design the models in a friendly environment, leaving the technical side of the implementation to the IT team."