BPM in Action

Dennis Byron, my new ebizQ BPM “blogmate” and one of my favorite pundits, wrote recently about Appian and Enterprise Rent-a-Car. I love the idea of “renting BPM,” and agree with Dennis completely that it’s something we could sooner rather than later, and not necessarily just from Appian.

I found another recent announcement equally interesting. In February, Vitria announced M3O, an environment it claims “empowers business users to directly model, manage, monitor and optimize their business processes.”

If you talk with senior executives at other BPM companies, as I have done recently, you hear several terms and variations repeated with increasing frequency. A distillation of what I’ve heard, without quite so much release-related rigor, comes out very close to the Vitria announcement.

That is to say, what users apparently want and need – or at least what vendors think users want and need now – is the ability to model processes, then execute those model processes immediately and directly, with as much IT cooperation as available and as little required IT intervention as possible.

A single view of the process, the data it accesses, and its effects, in a secure “sandbox” that allows near-real-time manipulation and optimization, without disrupting business operations. Rapid collaboration between and among the businesspeople driving processes and the IT people managing the infrastructures that enable those processes.

You get the idea. Think of it as a kind of “BPM Live.”

Now, Vitria’s not the only vendor of BPM or related solutions pointing in this general direction. I expect to see more such announcements soon and frequently, especially as more “rental”/software-as-a-service (SaaS) alternatives for BPM and related functions appear. I think you should expect the same, as part of what I, Joe McKendrick and other members of the “punditocracy” appear to be predicting with greater frequency – something I’m calling, at least for now, “The Big Mash-Up.” That’s BPM, plus event-driven architectures (EDAs), enterprise information integration (EII), information lifecycle management (ILM), master data management (MDM), and service-oriented architectures (SOAs), among other significant IT initiatives.

Research I’m conducting at Aberdeen Group is unearthing high levels of interdependency and “cross-pollination” among such efforts. You can read more about it in the recent Aberdeen reports I wrote on EII and SOA performance, both of which are available at no cost at the Aberdeen Group Web site for, as they say, a limited time only.

More to come on this. Lots more. Stay tuned – and make sure to make Dennis feel welcome, too!

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Current Events • Enterprise Information Integration • Event-Driven Architecture • Information Lifecycle Management • SOA • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

I'm taking a brief break from my recent continuing diatribe about BPM first principles, to prepare for transition to a new job (which I'm thrilled to say will not affect my blogging for ebizQ), and to suggest that you might want to take a close look at a company called Autotask Corp.

As the name implies, the company's software is designed to automate a set of tasks. The set of tasks the company has chosen to automate are those used by providers of managed IT services to run their businesses. Specific processes and services supported range from management of customer relations, projects, and service desks to billing, dispatching, reporting, and time-tracking. And it's Web-based software as a service (SaaS), which means it's accessible from almost any browser-equipped, connected system Microsoft Windows-compatible connected device, optionally including handhelds, and it's available on demand. (No mention of Apple Inc. Macintosh or Linux support, but I'm sure these are coming – and will try to confirm same directly with the company.)

In addition, the company offers several other options, including the option of building other options, via its AutotaskExtend set of application programming interfaces (APIs), tools, and Web services. Autotask customers also have access to the AutotaskExtend Network (AXN), an online community and catalog of available Autotask extensions. (I'm a big fan of this approach, as exemplified by the Altiris Juice network, Salesforce.com, Inc.'s AppExchange and Apex Developer Network, and of course, the Java community pioneered by Sun Microsystems, Inc.)

Now, I understand that many if not most of you are probably not providers of managed IT services. However, I believe solutions such as those from Autotask can provide a wealth of information and market-proven experience that can help you to craft strategies for automating and managing IT operations and practices, whatever business your business is in. And given the flexibility and configuration options, Autotask can probably be put to work effectively in almost any IT organization, (And since free trials of the software are available, it's probably worth the exploration.) Also, the company offers numerous case studies and success stories at its Web site. These can help those of you leading IT and/or BPM efforts, too, by providing examples of how best to pursue initial deployments, and to “market” initial successes.

Every IT organization is increasingly called upon to act like a service provider or utility. In some cases, this actually means bidding and competing with outside alternative providers for enterprise projects. Whatever those of you responsible for such efforts can learn from those who are succeeding as commercial services providers cannot help but be helpful. At the very least, you should make sure that any IT service provider used or considered by your enterprise manages its business with Autotask or some similarly comprehensive and integrated set of solutions and practices.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Collaboration • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

As reported here at ebizQ, Lombardi, a leading provider of BPM solutions, has forged an alliance with a company called Gordian Transformation Partners. (According to legend, whoever could untie the Gordian Knot would become king of ancient Asia Minor. Alexander the Great, legend continues, when stymied by the failure of traditional knot-untying processes, took a different approach – he cut the knot in half with his sword. A straightforward, if unexpected solution to a knotty problem, and a great metaphor for BPM challenges.)

Under this new alliance, the companies will combine Lombardi's Blueprint collaborative process planning tool and Teamworks BPM suite with Gordian's expertise in process transformation and business performance improvement. Gordian has also joined Lombardi's Certified Partner Program, which provides assistance with honing partner BPM skills and identifying revenue opportunities.

Frankly, I am enthusiastic about this alliance, and expect to see more of them among BPM and BI solution vendors during the next 18 months and beyond. BPM and BI solution vendors tend to have expertise that is more focused on their solutions and horizontal business needs. Specialty consultants such as Gordian, in contrast, tend to have deep, focused, business-centric expertise in one or more specific markets. The combination means that companies focused on specific businesses can work with a knowledgeable partner to craft custom-tailored, finely tuned BPM and BI solutions from proven technological elements.

This is a win for all concerned. The BPM/BI solution vendor doesn't have to become another Accenture or IBM Global Services to compete effectively for business in particular markets, but can partner with "boutique" business experts instead. And such business experts don't have to risk getting drowned out or ignored when seeking to ally with a much larger and more broadly focused technology partner. Users, meanwhile, can acquire integrated, focused combinations of technology and expertise that help get them closer to true BI and business knowledge management (BKM).

The biggest potential obstacle? Expertise can still be relatively expensive to deliver and share, in part because it almost always involves putting people who command high hourly rates in front of other people who command high hourly rates. This may explain why the Lombardi-Gordian alliance seems focused primarily on so-called "Fortune 500" companies.

The next frontier? Figuring out how to combine software as a service (SaaS) with "expertise as a service," then to deliver both using IT instead of planes, trains, and automobiles. This is a hot emerging area with a lot of potentially important themes, variations, and players. I suspect I and my ebizQ blogmates will have more to say about it and related subjects, soon and more and more often. So do stay tuned…

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

If you have not yet done so, please go read the full transcript of the fine Keynote Ken Vollmer of Forrester Research delivered during the ebizQ BPM in Action Virtual Conference held in March. You might even want to save a copy, for inspiration (with appropriate attribution, of course!) as you craft your own BPM plans. The Webinar featuring Ken's presentation is also available for your dining and dancing pleasure, but you may find the transcript more immediately useful or easy to assimilate into your own evolving plans.

As you may or may not know or suspect, industry analysts have almost as much trouble saying they agree with one another as competing vendors do when sharing the same stage. (My ebizQ blogmate Sandy Kemsley knows this well.) Nonetheless, I find myself largely agreeing with my learned industry colleague Mr. Vollmer. I think he got the critical success factors right, although I might quibble with the order of some of them. (I do agree that technology comes last, however.) I also agree with his assessment of best practices. You may notice as you read through his remarks some resonance with past diatribes you may have experienced in this space.

However, I am concerned about the distinction Mr. Vollmer and Forrester have chosen to make between human-centric and integration-centric BPM. To me, this is verbiage that violates some of Mr. Vollmer's own recommendations, as it really focuses on the technologies underlying various competing solutions, and not the business goals being addressed. So I guess I'm casting my lot on the side of human-centric (albeit business-driven) BPM, another view of what I've referred to here previously as "business knowledge management" (BKM).

I believe there are processes and workflows used by people, and processes and workflows used by systems and resources, especially in a service-oriented architecture (SOA).However, I also believe there is no real BPM until and unless these processes, and the interactions and processes that link them to one another, are treated in an integrated, holistic way. I further believe the processes necessary to achieve this admittedly elusive and slippery goal will vary from organization to organization, depending largely upon the cultural issues, people, processes, and technologies in place and in play.

In this regard, you may also find useful some of the comments and observations made by Phil Gilbert, CTO at BPM solution provider Lombardi Software. Mr. Gilbert, responding to a spirited discussion moderated by Ms. Kemsley during the BPM in Action event, argues that business agility, visibility, and better conversations among decision-makers are more important than digressions about human- vs. integration-centric BPM. He argues further that BPM is coming into the enterprise from a variety of sources, including enterprise applications and software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions. You may recall largely positive rants about these issues within previous outings in this space as well.

My point here is that when you see overlap, if not violent agreement, among multiple allegedly expert observers and practitioners, the common ground is likely worth your time and attention. And I think the common ground here is that BPM works best when it is supported by consistent, well-thought-out, business-driven processes. These must include a fair (if not unfair) amount of discovery, documentation, mapping, and measuring of what's going on now. You can't get anyplace good until you have a good idea of your starting circumstances – or, perhaps more bluntly, you shouldn't start running until you're clear about the specific directions of "away" and "toward." As always, your comments and responses welcome.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

As part of my "day job" as a Robert Frances Group (RFG) analyst, I had a very interesting conversation with the founders of a very interesting business. The people were Stuart Cohen, former CEO of the non-profit Open Source Development Labs (now part of the Linux Foundation), and Evan Bauer, former CTO at Credit Suisse First Boston (and RFG colleague of mine). The business: the Collaborative Software Initiative (CSI).

The goal is both evolutionary and almost subversively revolutionary. The CSI wants to broker connections among what it calls "like-minded IT leaders," and use the best elements of the open source development model to create business applications. The CSI believes this could reduce the cost of building proprietary applications by huge amounts – from, say, $1 to $2 million to as low as $50,000 for each company supporting collaborative development. A "customer core team" of a few companies would collaborate with CSI principals, who do the actual "heavy lifting" needed to get the software created. Each software project will have a broad audience beyond the core team, and each will be fully supported by CSI and its partners, as released software and/or as software as a service, á la Salesforce.com, Inc.

What I like most about CSI, though, is the ability to bring collective experience, knowledge, proven practices and processes, and perhaps even wisdom to collaboratively developed applications. After all, if CSI can draw top-tier enterprises together, the people from those enterprises should be repositories of some pretty good practices and processes. And if there's anybody who can facilitate translation of those into agile and adept applications, it's Evan, Stuart, and their partners. By the way, on the vendor side, those partners currently include Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), IBM Corp., Intel Corp., and Novell Inc. – testament to the strength of the ideas and people behind CSI, methinks.

Past efforts at collaborative building of enterprise solutions have been fraught with challenges. I believe this is largely because many such efforts have focused on developers or vendor channel partners, to the sidelining or exclusion of the enterprises that want and need the solutions. By focusing on an alternative to the traditional methods of building business-specific applications, the CSI should be able to avoid those earlier drawbacks. After all, users pursuing solutions to common problems may be easier to coordinate than vendors and resellers seeking larger markets in which to compete while allegedly cooperating.

The CSI has not yet publicly announced any applications or enterprise customers, but that should be coming soon. Meanwhile, if you work at an enterprise that might benefit from an alternative to expensive and slow proprietary internal application development, you should definitely check out the CSI – and please let me know what you think. I think it's an idea that could go from "What the heck?" to "What took us so long?" pretty quickly. We'll see…

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Collaboration • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

If you've read almost any of my previous posts here, you probably know how I think BPM works best. I think BPM – and related functions, including business analytics, intelligence, and performance management – all need to be pervasive and invisible to deliver maximum business value. And I also think one way to make BPM and related functions pervasive and invisible is to embed them into the applications users use to do their jobs every day.

As you may have also read here previously, I believe the more business applications that are created by or in concert with business practitioners, the more likely those applications are to reflect and embed good processes and effective workflows. Who would know these things better – experienced practitioners or professional software developers? My vote goes with the experienced practitioners. I think it's easier to put tools in their hands for building and orchestrating applications than it is to teach good business practices to developers.

So I'm a big fan of two emerging trends – development tools and environments that are straightforward enough for the more business-minded than technologically savvy to use effectively, and online application exchanges. The former encourage experienced practitioners to build and influence applications. The latter encourage entrepreneurial developers of specialized applications to build them, because they don't have to find Windows-sized markets to justify the effort (and the marketing and support costs associated with traditional "bits-on-disks" software).

In this regard, I'm optimistic about two recent developments. Sun Microsystems, Inc. has just released JavaFX, development tools intended to ease and speed development of modern, functionally rich Java-based applications. Now, I share some of the concerns about JavaFX vs. Adobe Systems, Inc.'s Flex expressed by Tony Baer's "Report from JavaOne" here at ebizQ. Nonetheless, I can't help but believe that Java's broad and deep ecosystem of supporters will give JavaFX a significant market presence alongside Flex (and to the likely detriment of Microsoft Corp.'s alternative, Silverlight), if JavaFX delivers on its promise.

But that's not the most interesting BPM-related trend on my mind today. That would be the rise of online application exchanges. The latest of these I find interesting is Red Hat, Inc.'s Red Hat Exchange (RHX). This service combines applications developed by others with Red Hat's Enterprise Linux and/or JBoss middleware, into a single subscription agreement that consolidates acquisition, billing, delivery, and support. Red Hat plans to provide single-source support through unspecified cooperation with its application partners, and via select Red Hat resellers as well. Initial partners include providers of business software solutions for business intelligence (BI), collaboration, communications, and management of enterprise content, customer relationships, databases, and IT infrastructures, among other functions.

If you look at RHX in the context of the exchanges and supporting services already up and running from Salesforce.com and being developed by WebEx, discussed here previously, you'll see expanding sources of growing numbers and types of business applications. Some of these are designed for specific businesses, by and/or in concert with experienced practitioners. These are applications very likely to help the businesses that use them to implement and manage effective processes more consistently and easily – and more are coming…

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Oracle Corp. has made several recent announcements I think are of interest to anyone considering or pursuing BPM, business analytics (BA), business intelligence (BI), and/or related initiatives. These announcements should be of even more interest to anyone pursuing or considering such initiatives at an enterprise using or considering any Oracle solutions, including those it has acquired during the past few months and years. (The company is one of the only leading IT vendors of which I am aware that devotes a dedicated section of its Web sites to so-called "Strategic Acquisitions.")

As reported by ebizQ here, Oracle recently announced an ambitious road map focused on enterprise content/intellectual property (IP) management. As a significant step down the road described by said map, Oracle announced just yesterday Oracle Universal Content Management 10g Release 3, " a feature-rich, hot-pluggable ECM platform that helps organizations effectively capture, store, manage, find, publish and retain unstructured content, while easily fitting into heterogeneous infrastructures," according to Oracle. Since most of that content and IP resides in corporate databases, many if not most of which are overseen by Oracle software, this focus makes sense for Oracle, and should make sense for a number of Oracle customers as well. (The company bought content management solution provider Stellent last year; yesterday's announcement is its first major ECM product release since that acquisition.)

Separately, Oracle also announced the general availability of its Siebel CRM On Demand Integration Pack for Oracle E-Business Suite. This unwieldy name describes a solution that integrates Siebel CRM On Demand, Oracle's subscription-based, software-as-a-service (SaaS) CRM solution, with the back-office Oracle E-Business Suite. (At $30,000 per processor, the solution may not displace many Salesforce.com deployments, but should deliver value to enterprises seeking to extend the value of their incumbent Siebel CRM On Demand and/or Oracle E-Business Suite implementations.)

This announcement follows by five days the debut of Oracle Financial Services Profitability Analytics. This is effectively a pre-built integration of Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition 10g Release 3 with Oracle Financial Services Applications (OFSA). The result is a business intelligence (BI) application "that delivers actionable insight to employees, helping them improve customer service and drive new levels of profitability [while helping] organizations reduce total IT cost and complexity." A tall order, but one that eliminates the need for enterprises to build their own integrations between the two offerings, according to Oracle.

And both of these announcements follow and build upon the Oracle Application and Integration Architecture the company announced in mid-April. The goal of that initiative is to ease and speed integrations of Oracle and non-Oracle solutions, via a common object model and a platform compliant with the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), a widely used business process modeling language.

What's it all mean? Well, for companies reliant upon Oracle technologies, especially Oracle Fusion middleware, these announcements are good news for any process-focused initiatives under way or under consideration. Whether you and your enterprise are starting with a focus on application integration, CRM, or ECM, Oracle appears to have a path laid out that links your initiative to its databases via process-enabled, standards-compliant integration techniques. At least in theory. Oracle has its critics and detractors, even among its customers. But no one can say the company doesn't have strategies and plans to add value to (and generate additional revenues from) investments in its database solutions. Got opinions about Oracle and its strategies for support of BPM, BI, and related initiatives? Please share them, and I'll share and comment upon the most interesting and provocative ones I receive.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

This may seem counterintuitive, but Salesforce.com, Inc. says it wants to help to create and nurture future competitors.

Yes. To itself.

The company's ability to deliver software as a service (SaaS) for customer relationship management (CRM) and other critical business functions is well proven. It has opened up its SaaS delivery architecture and its development tools, to enable creation of applications custom-tailored for specific businesses, their needs, and their processes. It is now offering a Platform Edition of its architecture, for those who want to deliver on-demand applications other than those which Salesforce.com itself offers. It has created a rapidly growing online AppExchange and supporting business model, to help others market and find such applications. (The folks at Forbes.com called the Salesforce.com AppExchange "the iTunes of business software" and one of the "top 10 disruptors of 2006.")

Now, Salesforce.com has created the AppExchange Incubator. It's (initially) a single physical building. It currently houses 32 ventures – some start-ups, some extensions of already established companies – in various stages of, well, incubation. Salesforce.com business and technical resources and expertise are immediately available to them on demand, as are all the support services you'd expect to find in a modern office/start-up facility.

The upshot of this should be rapid and broad development of applications that focus on specific combinations of specific business types and supporting processes. A broad range of specific combinations. Resulting in an expanding marketplace of pre-built and easily customizable process-aware, process-enabled, and process-enabling applications. Applications that can be deployed as needed, with minimal infrastructure investments, just like Salesforce.com's core, proven applications.

This should also result in a lively online ecosystem of technology- and business-focused folks with growing bases of experience in designing, building, and deploying such applications. An ecosystem that becomes an easily tapped fount of knowledge, skills, and talent for those seeking help with their own applications. And so on. And so on.

But enough of what I think. What does the company itself say about its plans? This – it wants to "[b]ecome the trusted business and technology platform for empowering the next generation of on-demand."

And what do the "incubatees" think? Well, I spoke with several of them during my visit to the Incubator yesterday. They all said a bunch of interesting things, but the most interesting was one they almost all said in almost the same way. A lot of other vendors are saying the right things about SaaS, on-demand applications, and integrating business processes within those applications. But only Salesforce.com has proven the ability and the willingness to "walk the talk," and to bet their entire corporate strategy on enabling and supporting success with on-demand applications.

I think the Salesforce.com strategy could help accelerate progress toward that wonderful day when we can stop worrying about how to manage business processes explicitly. Instead, we can focus on managing people and the IT resources they use to do their jobs, confident that many if not all of those resources are delivering the functionality and information we need to integrate process management with management of those people and resources.

Sigh. We'll see. Meanwhile, dreams are good, right? (And let's not forget, others such as WebEx are contemplating similar strategies.) What's it all mean? Let me know what you think...

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Business Knowledge Management • Collaboration • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

We interrupt our apparent mini-series on BPM vendor evolution to bring you more exciting reports from the front lines of business process failure…

As you may have read in my posting on testing, I tried, I really tried, to give the AT&T Online Vault back-up service a fair shot at my business. The upshot of that attempt was that I downloaded the software and a patch for the software, and left it running on my computer, which was plugged in and online, as requested for a first backup. I went to bed, and awoke the next morning, to find less than 5 percent of the fewer than 300 megabytes of files I wanted to protect were backed up.

Infuriated, I dug through the AT&T software and online documentation, only to find no clear, explicit instructions for how to deactivate my free trial and the software. So I e-mailed the helpful representative who'd fixed my original software problems, and found out that removing my PC from the list of systems known to and approved by the software would deactivate the service. So I did that. I then used Windows' trusty "Add/Remove Programs" feature to remove the relevant software.

Only it didn't all go away. And I didn't realize this until my system repeatedly, suddenly, and mysteriously slowed down and started generating unusual amounts of online traffic. So I poked around in Task Manager, to find a process related to my terminated AT&T Online Vault account still trying to make backups! I had to restart my system and keep it offline long enough to remove the software entirely, before it tried again. (That software also required that I change the physical location of some of my files, so it wouldn't try backing them up, but did not undo this change upon being uninstalled.)

So I went to my old online backup provider, Backup.com, formerly "@Backup." Within an hour, I had activated a free trial account, downloaded and installed their software, told it what files I wanted to back up, backed them up. I also within that time set the schedule for regular subsequent backups, which have gone off without a hitch.

Now, I don't know how it is that "the new AT&T," with all of its resources and experience, couldn't figure out how to deliver an online backup service at least equal to what Backup.com provides, in terms of clarity of instruction, ease of use, flexibility, and functionality. Frankly, I don't know why AT&T didn't just craft a licensing or co-marketing deal with Backup.com, which has been in the business since 1997. But I suspect there are some broken business processes and/or political considerations behind how such decisions get and got made. I could be wrong. But I doubt it.

In any case, the BPM-related lessons here are that it's not enough to test how new software or business services run, nor how well they do (or do not) install successfully on a variety of systems. It's also essential to test how well they can be de-installed or rolled back, and how well they can restore host systems to their respective states before the attempted installation or invocation. And, of course, this applies to supporting documentation as well. Just as "measure twice, cut once" is always true in construction and repair, "test more, support less" is always true with new applications, services, or technologies.

Regarding NetIdentity, they have for years offered a great domain-sharing service that, among other things, makes having an e-mail address of "yourfirstname@yourlastname.com" relatively easy and inexpensive to have. I had used NetIdentity as my primary personal e-mail provider happily for years as well. Then, the company was purchased by Tucows Inc., a premier site for downloads of freeware, shareware, and "trialware." Now, I have no idea about the internal heavy lifting required when the NetIdentity services were moved from their original infrastructure to the Tucows infrastructure. What I do know, however, is that ever since then, my e-mail access has been far less reliable, and often much slower. I also know this problem is endemic, based on the sometimes incendiary comments made online about Tucows, its customer support, and its management. I haven't given up the service yet, but I'm using Google's Gmail a LOT more.

The BPM lessons here are two-fold. Fold the First: Make every upgrade and infrastructure transition as invisible to users as possible, especially where software as a service (SaaS) is concerned. Salesforce.com, Inc. and WebEx Communications, Inc. are two companies very good at this, and useful examples of how it should be done.

Fold the Second: Assume that every time you try to make an upgrade or infrastructure change invisible, it won't be. That means communicate clearly, before, during, and after the transition, and keep users and other stakeholders in the loop regarding progress. That way, even if there is a surprise malfunction or other hiccup, those users and stakeholders are far less likely to panic, rebel, and cast blame.

Make sure processes at your business address these sometimes-hidden issues, explicitly and effectively. And test those processes from time to time, to make sure they work the ways you think they should. Let me know how process testing works – and doesn't work – at your organization, or others known to you, and let's see if we can't improve things at least a little.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (1)  | TrackBacks (0)

So Cisco Systems, Inc. is buying WebEx Communications, Inc., as reported at ebizQ, and you may be wondering "Why?" and/or "What the heck has that got to do with BPM?" Both good questions, each of which I'll attempt to answer, at least cursorily.

Cisco said WebEx brings it all kinds of additional goodness to add to its "unified communications" vision, especially for small and mid-sized businesses. Now, when I hear terms like "unified communications," I remember reading what Gandhi said in response to a request for his opinion about Western-style "representative democracy" – "it would be a good idea." But I think I understand what Cisco intends to mean. (And that last sentence reminds me of something Humpty Dumpty said in Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" – "I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but what you fail to realize is that what you heard is not what I meant." But I digress.)

Basically, all communications (and, increasingly, all collaborations) other than in-person, face-to-face meetings are enabled by IT and networks, a lot of which rely on Cisco technologies. From Cisco's perspective, then, "unified communications" is shorthand for "matching communications technology mixes seamlessly with how people want and need to communicate." Hence, the BPM connection. (I'm sure Cisco would also add something about doing this in ways that create new and extend existing revenue streams, but perhaps fortunately, that's not my focus here.)

WebEx, meanwhile, has attracted more users to its software-as-a-service (SaaS) collaboration and communications platforms than even Salesforce.com, about which I've written repeatedly here previously. In addition, WebEx recently introduced WebEx Connect, which basically enables developers and enterprises to build and deploy processes and applications atop the WebEx SaaS platform. This is at least conceptually similar to what Salesforce.com has done with its SaaS platform and development tools, and both are very good ways to build processes into frequently used business applications and services. Which, in turn, is, I think, a great way to make processes ubiquitous and invisible, increasing the odds that they will actually get managed effectively.

Now, what makes this particularly interesting is that Salesforce.com has of late been touting Cisco itself as one of Salesforce.com's recent big customer wins. This perhaps sets the stage for some interesting competitions between Salesforce.com and WebEx solutions within Cisco, some interesting integrations of the two environments at and/or enabled by Cisco, or all of the above.

In the meantime, though, this is another prime example of vendors evolving in response to the evolution of user and enterprise behaviors, goals, and needs. Whatever you do and wherever you work, I'm pretty certain you should be tracking what Cisco and WebEx do and plan, as well as what Salesforce.com has in mind. The range and scope of available, on-demand, process-enabled applications is about to start getting pretty big pretty fast, and you want to be ready. Ready or not, let me know what happens, and what you plan to do next.

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)

Another "first mile" stumbling block in the path towards effective, human-centric BPM (and/or business knowledge management or BKM) is capture of information in ways that are easily usable by IT systems, yet easily used by humans. In this context, the printed form, filled out "by hand" with a pen or even at a computer, is at or near the top of everyone's list of very-favorite IT challenges.

So, let's say you've at least got online forms, created and stored as, say, Adobe Systems Inc. PDF documents, and you're also using IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes and/or Domino solutions. Let's say you've also got the great idea that the ability to capture information from and about those forms into Notes/Domino databases would be a nifty enhancement to your BPM/BKM efforts. But how to capture that PDF information into those databases painlessly?

Why, with a tool built atop Microsoft Corp.'s .NET, and delivered via software as a service (SaaS), of course. And no, you don't have to build said tool. The heavy lifting's already been done, in the form, so to speak, of FormRouter.NET from FormRouter, Inc.

It's a hosted service that charges annual subscription fees to its cadre of corporate customers. What they get in exchange is easy, painless transmogrification of PDF forms – or Flash, HTML, or InfoPath documents, or Microsoft .NET Active Server Pages or Word or Excel files, or OpenOffice.org spreadsheets – into Notes/Domino databases. File attachments, form data only, or complete forms, with all digital signatures intact, if users so choose. No programming. No servers to deploy or maintain.

And the FormRouter solution works with other databases, too. Microsoft Access, for example (and perhaps not surprisingly). There's a great success story at the FormRouter Web site about a company that used the company's solution to cut down on spam. The company stopped posting e-mail addresses on its Web site, and replaced them an online inquiry form. The form routes inquiries to the right people, and captures form information in an Access database for follow-on marketing efforts. Spam down, productivity, sales, and satisfaction up.

I met with the CTO of FormRouter, Jim Healy, and took a tour of the company's Notes/Domino integration during IBM's Lotusphere event in Orlando last week. The company is working with partners ranging from IBM to Intel Corp. With FormRouter, for example, field forces can use online forms based on the Mobile Forms Technology (MFT) FormRouter developed in partnership with Intel, then have those forms easily sucked up by Salesforce.com databases. FormRouter was the first service provider granted the right by Adobe to add extensions to the free Adobe Reader software, Jim said.

No matter what collaboration environment you're running, if you're dealing with forms, and looking for a way to deal with them more effectively, you should check out FormRouter. And whether you are or are not dealing with forms, you should still check out FormRouter, for clues about how the combination of forms capture and analysis can help you build and refine business processes more effectively. After all, in a lot of ways, forms, how they're filled out, and what happens after they are represent critical first steps in many business processes. So they might be a good starting point for your own BPM/BKM efforts. Or not. Either way, I'm sure you'll let me know…

Posted by mdortch in BPM • Collaboration • IBM • Microsoft • Software as a Service  |  Permalink  | Comments (0)  | TrackBacks (0)