Metastorm buys Proforma

Business Process Management (BPM) company Metastorm announced the acquisition of Enterprise Architecture (EA) and process analytics software specialist Proforma in a deal that offers an insight into the future of the BPM market, reports VNUNet.

Metastorm said that the acquisition of Proforma's ProVisionEA suite, which provides firms with visibility over their business strategy and organisational structures, will significantly extend the capabilities of its own BPM suite.

"A lot of BPM projects simply automate processes within a departmental silo without accounting for the impact on the rest of the business," said Laura Mooney, senior director of corporate and product marketing at Metastorm.

IBM announced the addition of a second solution to its suite of Portal business packages, solutions on top of WebSphere Portal software.

The add-on package, known as an "accelerator" is, according to the company, designed for improving productivity and performance by managing Human Resources activities such as on-boarding a new employee, vacation planning, implementing a pay raise or other administrative tasks.

"Employee and manager self service is one of leading applications that WebSphere Portal is deployed for, so it is crucial to give IT departments and LOBs a new package to quickly and easily deploy a solution that is flexible to handle a variety of back end data," said Larry Bowden, vice president of portal solutions for IBM Lotus.

Alphalogix released Tasica Forms Director 3.0, open standard workflow application software, reports eMedia Wire.

The company says the package integrates with existing infrastructure for directories, databases and portals, so there is no limit in choice in software, operating system or computing platform.

"Being able to create an electronic version of a form is only half of the value that business process automation brings to a corporation," says Brian Bouchard, CEO of Alacranet, business partner of Alphalogix. "Tasica Forms Director is the missing link that gives any one within an organisation ranging from sales people, HR managers and IT departments the opportunity to develop workflows in the same structure as they created the electronic form."