SAI and OpenConnect to Host Conference on Automatic Business Process Discovery; European Seminar Will Bring Together Industry Leaders BMC, SAP and Leading Independent Analyst Firm with Academic Researchers

Business Wire, August 30, 2006

DALLAS -- SAI and OpenConnect Systems, Inc., will bring together leading software vendors, industry influencers and academics to address the missing "discovery" piece of business process improvement at an international seminar in Antwerp, Belgium next month. The Sept. 21 seminar will examine the need for an emerging field called Business Process Discovery (BPD) which makes use of documented process facts to derive business processes, instead of anecdotal or sampling methodologies.

In today's business environment, most key business processes are technologically enabled. By leveraging this technology a complete, comprehensive description of the business processes is available by automatically observing users interactions with the technology assets. This provides a complete view, both in terms of process scope, and in data richness, yielding important process information on process variability, time requirements, and data conditions that trigger significant process deviations.

"Business Process Intelligence is an important emerging field of research that will complement existing data mining and business intelligence techniques. Understanding the proper mathematical methods to discover relevant processes is key to apply the discovery results in upgrading the value of business processes," said Prof. Dr. Jacques Vandenbulcke, Chairman of SAI.

"Business process improvement requires a firm understanding of the behavior of the business users," said Jim Sinur Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Gartner. "Business processes are dynamic; they change over time and users may not execute processes exactly the same. Successful businesses are able to quickly discover, analyze, optimize and deploy improved processes using fact based methodologies on top of modeling and anecdotal methods."

At the seminar, OpenConnect will discuss real-world case studies of the value of automatic business process improvement using its Comprehend product. Comprehend automatically discovers business processes by observing all user interactions with an organization's mainframe software applications, revealing a detailed understating of business user's behavior patterns. By identifying these critical business processes, companies are making better decisions to get the most out of their mainframe investments.

"Comprehend allow organizations to drive value based on quantifiable facts rather than mass conjecture. Our customers are reaping millions of dollars in IT savings using Comprehend," said Edward Peters, CEO of OpenConnect. "More importantly, using Comprehend, OpenConnect customers are creating tens of millions of dollars of business value with low-risk, quantifiable, highly targeted business process improvement projects. This is the answer the Business/IT alignment problem that the industry has been seeking."

The business process discovery seminar is hosted by SAI and will be held on Sept. 21, 2006 (13u30 - 20u30) at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Antwerp (Belgium) (Location: http://www.sai.be/nl/location.aspx?ev_id=83&loc_id=1). For more information or to attend the event, contact OpenConnect or SAI (http://www.sai.be/nl/eventdetail.aspx?ev_id=83).

About SAI

SAI is a non-profit vendor-independent professional association in the field of computer and information/communication technology. It is already more than 30 years the leading platform in Belgium for academia and business/technology professionals to meet each other and discuss recent trends and evolutions in ICT. SAI is a very successful organizer of workshops, seminars, in-depth courses and professional discussion evening events. For more information on SAI, visit www.sai.be.

About OpenConnect

OpenConnect is the premier supplier of technology solutions that turn mainframe assets into business value. With a rich history of innovations in both mainframe and Web technologies, OpenConnect helps the worlds largest and most complex organizations comprehend, configure and securely connect to their mainframe applications and data through Web-based architectures. OpenConnect's solutions save companies time and money, improve return on legacy technology investments and minimize the risk of expansion into the online realm. OpenConnect's products are distributed in more than 60 countries and used by more than 60 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For more information on OpenConnect, visit www.oc.com.