Fujitsu, CA Square Off in BPM

Computer Associates International Inc., better known for its security and network management software, is entering the business process management sector with a new process management suite, CleverPath Aion 10—announced last week—but the software maker is not alone.

Infrastructure software provider Fujitsu Software Corp. will announce this week the availability of its Interstage Business Process Manager 7.0, which enables process modeling, automation, integration, management and optimization.

Version 7.0 brings to the table a BPM console for PLM (product lifecycle management) from a single interface and beefed-up BAM (business activity monitoring) capabilities that let users automatically invoke responses based on defined thresholds.

In addition, Fujitsu, of Sunnyvale, Calif., is adding a BPM application package and prebuilt process templates to the suite, along with enhanced standards support including BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) import and export capabilities.

Version 7.0, available now, comes in three editions: Enterprise, Advanced and Entry.

To read more about CA's CleverPath BPM suite, click here.

Separately, CA, of Islandia, N.Y., has for some time offered different facets of BPM functionality with its rules engine. This latest iteration of CleverPath adds a Business Process Manager module to the existing Business Rules Expert module.

Now the CleverPath suite lets both IT and business users define, implement, monitor and manage business processes. The software includes functionality for workflow implementation and management that includes human-to-human, system-to-human and system-to-system interactions, officials said.

The Business Process Manager module brings in process management, business rules management and BAM capabilities—all enabled by a workflow engine that supports process orchestration using Web services. The Business Rules Expert module adds rules development with both object-oriented and component-based deployment capabilities. It can support thousands of chained rules and complex dependencies, while a change management function lets users change business processes without changing run-time processes.

To read about Metastorm's BPM with rules management, click here.

After two years of pushing for this specific functionality, Mark Kalevik, software engineering manager at American Medical Response Inc., is thrilled with CA's new rules capabilities. "Now users can build [rules] from scratch, lay out all the rules and test them within the same application, with version control and source control," said Kalevik in Denver.

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