Software AG Brings Collaboration, Interoperability and Real-Time Visibility to the Extended Enterprise with Latest webMethods Release

Business Wire, Sept 12, 2007

"In order to keep pace with business change, the underlying business infrastructure must work to synchronize these changes across multiple users, data stores and systems," said Dr. Peter Kurpick, President and Chief Product Officer of the webMethods business line of Software AG. "What's needed is a more holistic, lifecycle approach for managing both IT assets and business processes that brings governance, interoperability, collaboration and visibility together as a sustainable and scalable response to these demands. In other words, what Software AG's webMethods uniquely delivers today."

Kurpick continued, "By fully addressing the needs of all process actors, including legacy systems, external trading partners, and third-party services, as well as both business and IT users, webMethods can streamline the deployment of more powerful solutions. Our current release establishes both our ESB and BPM solutions as the broadest and most comprehensive in the industry, and marks the debut of a powerful solution for improving supply chain performance."

webMethods 7.1 - New features at-a-glance

webMethods BPMS

webMethods BPMS is a full feature process design, execution, monitoring and management platform. In recent evaluations, Forrester Research recognized webMethods BPMS as a leader in both The Forrester Wave[TM]: Human-Centric BPM For Java Platforms, Q3 2007 (August 3, 2007) and The Forrester Wave[TM]: Integration-Centric Business Process Management Suites, Q4 2006 (December 20, 2006).

A significant enhancement to webMethods BPMS is the inclusion of full-feature simulation capabilities in the current release. Using estimated, random or historical business data, simulation allows users to test and evaluate the performance of proposed business processes and changes under real-world conditions prior to implementation. Specific features include visualization, scenario management, bottleneck identification, multi-process simulation, reporting and versioning. By analyzing this data, users can quickly optimize process performance and more assuredly implement suggested changes.

In accordance with popular 'measurement-driven' methodologies, such as Six Sigma and Lean, webMethods 7.1 also delivers a new class of out-of-the-box, task-related Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be easily customized. The insight that they offer into the ways in which users impact process performance can be used to better prioritize, delegate or escalate tasks, and to 'close-the-loop' by suggesting subsequent process improvements. In order to maximize productivity, business analysts can define specific KPIs at design-time that are automatically monitored and measured by the business activity monitoring (BAM) engine.

Additional features of webMethods BPMS 7.1 include business calendaring and integration with Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes, new service level agreement (SLA) management tools, additional, out-of-the-box task analytics, and overall performance improvements. Using these features, users can focus on continually improving their business processes to deliver better bottom line business results.