IBM to acquire Lombardi

Pretty significant move in the BPM (Business Process Management) space - IBM announces it is acquiring Lombardi. That leaves even fewer independent players in the market - Pega, Savvion, Intalio, Ultimus and my former company - Newgen Software amongst those.

New stimulus bill contains complete health IT act

The latest in HITECH is not what you think it is - it is the Health IT for Economic and Clinical Health Act. The act is part of the economic stimulus bill expected to be signed into law this February. It provides for a whopping $20 billion in health information technology spending - I realize a billion isn't what it used to be given all the numbers floating around in the current economic mess, but it still is more than pocket change :-)

The cornerstone of this Act is the emphasis on widespread use of Electronic Health Records (EHR) by doctors, hospitals, and payers. And for once it seems like even the privacy advocates like ACLU and others are lending support.

Read more here.

Technorati Tags: Electronic Health Records, EHR, EMR, HITECH, Health Information Technology

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS)

CMIS (pronounced See-Miss) is the first big thing to happen on the ECM standards front in a very long time, and it promises to be a big thing. In particular, as more business processes rely on underlying content in multiple structured and unstructured content repositories, CMIS will enable processes to interact with multiple content repositories seemlessly.

CMIS already has strong vendor support with the big ones already onboard - IBM, Microsoft, EMC, Open Text, Oracle, SAP and Alfresco.

Click here for CMIS standards page from OASIS.

Click here for Alan Pelz-Sharpe's take on it.

Watch this space for more developments...

Another one bites the dust...

I haven't been keeping track of the fallen soldiers in the  ECM army - but this is a big one. Interwoven has been acquired by Autonomy for $775m. See the full press release here.

So Autonomy is now an Enterprise Search, Web Content Management, Enterprise Content Management, Web Optimization, EDiscovery, ............. company. How much synergy is there really between these business / product lines?

The Case For Online Document Management

This article from Forbes.com talks about a trend that's long overdue.

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2008/12/22/online-document-management-ent-tech-cx_bm_1222bmightydocmanagement.html

For those of us that have spent our last decade in Enterprise Content Management, we have seen several attempts aimed at providing an always-on, outside the firewall, web-accessible document repository for collaboration as well as for archive and retrieval. What has happened this time around is that the attempt is led not by the third-party vendors like Xythos and others, but by the now onmi-present Microsoft Sharepoint infrastructure available to enterprises as well as small and mid-sized businesses. The seamless integration between Microsoft Office technologies (Word, Excel and Powerpoint), Microsoft Exchange and Outlook based messaging infrastructure and Sharepoint is making traditional ECM products redundant. Some have clearly moved to more of a Storage Management focus - EMC, for example. Others like IBM Filenet are focused more on the production workflows and documents associated with high volume business transactions.

Sharepoint may begin to see some Open Source challengers - like AlFresco, but in terms of sheer market share, the two don't compare. On the other hand, SaaS offerings like Salesforce.com are taking away a part of the market for document management, particulary document management needs related to sales, pre-sales and marketing functions in an enterprise.

What ground breaking innovations are your looking forward to in 2009 in the ECM space? Do comment here.

Technorati Tags: ECM, Enterprise Content Management, IBM Filenet, EMC Documentum, Microsoft Sharepoint

Season's Greetings and Happy New Year!

Wishing all our friends all the very best this holiday season and in the new year! Click here for an animated greeting.

Six Sigma: So Yesterday?

I guess I missed it when this article first published in June. Here's a quote from the BusinessWeek article - it's quite telling and resonates with a lot of us.

" But as its popularity endures, the notion of Six Sigma as a corporate cure-all is subsiding. Once a company has done the requisite belt-tightening, "the strategic needs of a business change," says Robert Carter, a consultant at defense contractor Raytheon (RTN ). Kick-starting the top line becomes paramount; the best way there apart from an acquisition is innovation. At Raytheon, Carter is leading a Six Sigma effort to promote innovation. But while "most Six Sigma practitioners are very strong on the left brain, innovation very much starts in the right hemisphere," says Carter. Even he, a Six Sigma expert, acknowledges the "define, measure, analyze, improve, control" mind-set doesn't entirely gel with the fuzzy front-end of invention. When an idea starts germinating, Carter says, "you don't want to overanalyze it," which can happen in a traditional DMAIC framework."

Six Sigma also has a lot of overlap with Business Process Improvement efforts in Enterprises. However, I truly believe that unless Enterprises start looking at BPMS as an enabler for process and business innovation as opposed to process efficiencies, they will be using only half the potential.

The Role of Business Process Management in SOA

The Role of Business Process Management in SOA

A good article by Sandy Carter of IBM that addresses the relationship between BPM and SOA - both of which are top of the mind for CIO's and IT managers today. Sandy talks about the complimentary relationship between BPM and SOA - "BPM is growing in popularity and is complementary to SOA due to its ability to help make business processes more efficient and effective while enabling an organization to more easily adapt to changing business requirements. BPM based on SOA is technology's response to the growing demand for a flexible business environment that is not hindered by application silos."

This is quite helpful to vendors like us as it clearly identifies the relationship between BPM and SOA as being complimentary. Lot of people use BPM and SOA interchangeably which creates a lot of confusion and unrealistic expectations.

Another quotation on note here is this one that equates SOA to speed and agility of the IT organization for implementing and integrating process automation components, while BPM helps business analysts achieve speed and agility in designing the process.

"For BPM to be successful and valuable to the enterprise, the speed and agility of IT organizations implementing and integrating the process automation components must match the speed and agility of business analysts redesigning the process.

Just as BPM capabilities needed to evolve over time to add flexibility to process design, so too do application integration systems need to evolve to automate the new flexibility processes in the real world. This integration evolution requires the ability to create independence between process and service implementation, and to remove the tight coupling between a specific integration technology and individual business applications. This is where SOA comes in because it provides the technical ability to create that process implementation independence."

A good case study on the interrelationship between BPM and SOA can be found on my company's website http://www.newgensoft.com/images/cs_emea9.pdf.

If you are looking at implementing BPM+SOA initiatives in your organization, be sure to put Newgen Software on your list of vendors that can help you achieve the often promised yet rarely delivered speed and agility.

ECM Vendors - and then there was one less left standing

The ECM marketplace consolidation juggernaut continues. Today Mobius Management Systems announced it was being acquired by Allen Systems Group. One wonders who's gonna be the next one on the block - there aren't that many left out there. Vignette, Interwoven, Hyland Software and Laserfiche are the ones that look likely. Woodrow probably sums it up best in his blog here.

Defining Document Management - Dec 2006

Here's a good one on defining Document Management or Enterprise Content Management. Looks like AIIM needs to do a better job of popularizing a common definition of these terms - these are hardly new technologies anymore, but the terms have been so broadly used for so many different things that confusion abounds in the market.

"What document management and workflow applications mean to your enterprise

By Maryse de la Giroday

Have you heard the story about the blindfolded people, each given a part of an elephant to touch and are then asked to describe the rest of the animal? The person at the tail describes a very different animal than the person at the ears or the one at the feet and so on. Well, except for the fact that we’re not wearing blindfolds, we’re in pretty much the same situation when it comes to discussing document management. All the questions you ask about document management and the answers you receive reflect yours or the vendor’s perspective.""

technorati tags: document+management, enterprise+content+management, ecm, dms, AIIM, EMC, Filenet, IBM, Documentum, Kofax, Newgen+Software, OmniDocs

DMS: the Indian angle - Express Computer

DMS: the Indian angle - Express Computer: "DMS: the Indian angle"

"New-found enthusiasm among government organisations to leverage IT as an enabler for their growth is propelling DMS adoption. Vendors foresee an opportunity in providing state-of-the-art products and solutions to Indian enterprises that are setting up offices abroad, as well as to MNCs coming to India. The rapid growth in telecom, manufacturing and retail has added fuel to this fire. The telecom sector expects to tap 500 million consumers by 2010. Forecasts Diwakar Nigam, MD, NewGen, “Greater storage capabilities and tools for automated management of data, increased demands of mobile users, integration of other enterprise applications with the DMS, superior workflow capabilities providing quick access to voluminous information such as high-quality video and pictorial data (in addition to the traditional documents flow), and last but not the least, compliance, will drive the market in India.”

Things are really hotting up in the Indian market - and Document Management is an idea whose time has really come. ‘‘Owing to the large number of public sector enterprises, which are still paper-based, there is considerable scope for DMS in India. Due to continuous geographical expansion and the launch of new operations, enterprises are demanding solutions to manage their massive amount of content, both structured and unstructured.’’ says Diwakar Nigam, Managing Director, Newgen Software.

technorati tags: ECM, Enterprise+Content+Management, Document+Management, Newgen+Software, Diwakar+Nigam

More on defining Business Process Management (BPM)

Here's quite a telling post on the WFMC (Workflow Management Coalition) bulletin board. It seems clear that the organizations promoting BPM have themselves been unable to come to grips with defining what exactly is BPM. Here's an excerpt "We have a definition for Workflow, and Business Process in the glossary. Now we need a definition of BPM that we all agree on. We need this urgently for the asia tour." Read the full post here.

The situation gets even more complicated as AIIM continues to treat BPM as part of the overall Enterprise Content Management(ECM) domain. Click here for more.

technorati tags: BPM, BPMS, Business+Process+Management, ECM, Enterprise+Content+Management, AIIM, WFMC

Defining BPM (Business Process Management)

An attempt to compile the various definitions of BPM floating around, on a rainy Bay area winter morning:

• The term Business Process Management (or BPM) refers to activities performed by businesses to optimize and adapt their processes. (Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_management)

• Business process management (BPM) is a systematic approach to improving an organization's business processes. BPM activities seek to make business processes more effective, more efficient, and more capable of adapting to an ever-changing environment. BPM is a subset of infrastructure management, the administrative area of concern dealing with maintenance and optimization of an organization's equipment and core operations. A business process is a set of coordinated tasks and activities, conducted by both people and equipment, that will lead to accomplishing a specific organizational goal. (from http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci1088464,00.html)

• Business Process Management it is a term that describes activities and (or) events which are performed to optimize a business process. These activities are aided by software tools. These types of software tools are also called BPM tools. (from http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/B/BPM.html)

• The BPM Group defines full cycle BPM as including:

• Discovery – the ability to reveal the current situation around the organisations business processes including people skills and aptitude, systems usage and usefulness for process integration, managements understanding and process maturity.
• Analysis – moving beyond ‘mapping’ of activities and tasks into aspects such as change capability within processes, ideas concerning business performance and the ways and means by which we understand our organisation and its objectives.
• Design – turning the Discovery, and knowledge acquired, with the Analysis, and understanding developed into a meaningful design. Again this must encompass not just the visible process flows and interaction but the supporting and managing frameworks, from management communication mechanisms to approaches to change etc.
• Validation – ensuring that what we are planning to do, what we actually do, and then how we learn and develop BPM further is logical and sound. At a simple level this may involve feedback loops, process audits, skills profiling and score-carding.
• Implement – moving from Design & Validation, which may be related into conceptual, logical and physical, into roll out of new ways of working. The implementation again goes beyond the technology and includes such aspects as people skills development, organisation shape and objectives and utilisation of best practice approaches to help achieve optimum implementation.
• Integration – one of the strengths of a full life cycle BPM approach is its ability to include and complement existing ways of working and at the same time migrate to powerful and compelling new ways of working. Contrast that with Process Re-engineering’s slash and burn approach with often disastrous consequences.
• Control – ensuring that all that is done is complete, effective and sustainable. Many solutions misunderstand this stage and implement report mechanisms and measurement processes that inadequately link to people issues, management objectives and organisation capability.
• Improvement – moving to a continuous and step change capable BPM Framework that allows and enables ongoing change and improving mastery of process.

More to follow...

Please feel free to add your definition(s)

technorati tags: BPM, BPMS, Business+Process+Management, Definition

Less coding, less outsourcing?

Less coding, less outsourcing?

Posted by Joe McKendrick @ 1:15 pm
http://blogs.zdnet.com/service-oriented/index.php?p=764

Will SOA take away a lot of outsourcers' business? Or will its impact be negligible?
Joe makes a good point here - technologies like SOA, and may I add BPM (Business Process Management), will have significant impact on the amount of coding going on in many large organizations. SOA's promise of reusable services and standard interfaces, combined with the revolutionary shift in way applications are developed using Business Process Management Suites will result in organizations becoming more and more adept at continuously modifying their information systems to keep in line with business requirements, without requiring down and dirty software coding.

However, in the short run it actually creates a lot of outsourcing potential as organizations rework legacy applications to bring them into the SOA framework. Also, there is a good chance that as SOA and BPM improve the agility of organizations in acting proactively or reacting to business needs, there will be considerably more work done in the future - and that would make up for any reduction in outsourcing. Outsourcing vendors are also keeping this in mind and upgrading their offerings from coding to business analysis, process consulting, etc.

Tags: BPM, BPMS, Business Process Management, Outsourcing, SOA, Service Oriented Architecture, Web Services, Legacy, Offshore

ECM consolidation - afterthought to my earlier post

I think SAP might beat HP to the next announcement - by OpenText's silence it looks like SAP buys OpenText is the next big announcement! Any betting men out there want to define the odds?

technorati tags: ECM, consolidation, stellent, oracle, opentext, hp, sap

Another one bites the dust - ECM Consolidation Juggernaut continues

Oracle announced its bid for acquiring Stellent yesterday - most people were expecting Oracle to be the likely suitor for Filenet a couple of months ago. Stellent is a poor cousin to Filenet - but then Oracle has a need to fill the ECM gap in their product portfolio and Stellent may just do that.

What it doesn't bring to Oracle is the strong business process management / workflow platform that they would have got from Filenet. But I guess they could make an interesting play combining their BPEL Server (the one they acquired from Collaxa and is now renamed to be part of their Fusion middleware) with Stellent's ECM.

Stellent itself was mostly a web content management company till a few years back when they acquired Optika - a Filenet wannabe with strong Imaging and Workflow solutions. It will be interesting how this mix and match portfolio will be integrated into Oracle's offerings.

I guess now that Oracle has played its hand, the speculation moves on the next big acquisition - HP and Microsoft are the likely ones to make such an announcement. My bet is on HP acquiring either Opentext, Interwoven or Vignette within the next quarter.

technorati tags: ecm, consolidation, acquisition, document+management, imaging, workflow, bpm, bpel, oracle, stellent, hp, opentext, microsoft, vignette, interwoven

Sarb-Ox Compliance: Five Lessons to Reduce Cost and Effort

Sarb-Ox Compliance: Five Lessons to Reduce Cost and Effort

The article correctly identifies the need for implementing financial compliance process management software. Newgen OmniCompliance - built on the award winning Newgen OmniFlow Business Process Management Suite offers out-of-the-box implementation of COSO framework along with an unparalleled process modeling interface to tweak and modify control and audit processes to individual enterprise requirements. Look up http://www.newgensoft.com/2005/products/omnicompliance.htm for more information

ECM Acquisitions: What's Going On? -- CMS Watch

ECM Acquisitions: What's Going On? -- CMS Watch: "ECM Acquisitions: What's Going On?"

Seriously, everyone saw it coming - I mean the sell-out of Filenet, but all were pointing to Oracle and HP as the potential suitors. I guess most people thought that IBM already had a very well rounded ECM and BPM product suite and they didn't need a high priced acquisition like Filenet. However, what's interesting to note is that IBM was coming in third in the rankings - behind Filenet and EMC and this firmly puts them back in the lead - by a considerable margin.

It will be interesting to see where IBM goes with this - already there is a lot of confusion in the IBM portfolio with BPM coming under there Websphere product group and Content Manager coming under their DB2 group. Are they gonna split up the Filenet products into ECM and BPM and have two different groups handle it?

technorati tags: bpm, bpms, business+process+management, filenet, ibm, hp, hewlett+packard, ecm, enterprise+content+management, acquisition, merger, consolidation,

David Ogren's BPM Blog - ebizQ

David Ogren on the difference begtween BPM and SOA - "The difference, fundamentally, is the direction at which SOA and BPM approach the problem. BPM starts with a business process and develops a solution from top down. SOA starts of an existing catalog of services and builds up. As a result, BPM projects tends to be tactical and SOA projects tends to be strategic."

Innovation through Co-Creation

SandHill.com | Management | Innovation through Co-Creation:

Dr. C.K. Prahalad has identified technology to atomate Business Processes as a key opportunity for IT vendors today and into the future in this article on SandHill.com

"Opportunities for Technology Vendors

At a time when personalization, flexibility and scalability are key considerations for enterprises, the entire IT industry must redirect its focus to the areas which matter most for businesses.

# Interoperability - Much attention is focused on open source. While many consider the greatest value of open source is that it is 'free,' the reality is that the main advantage of open source is its interoperability. Is the industry putting enough energy behind delivering on open source's potential for interoperability and transparency?

# Large Databases - Ten terabytes used to be considered a large database. Today, WalMart is working with approximately 500 terabytes-worth of data. There is a huge opportunity to increase the size and speed with which data is accessed. These systems must go beyond providing decision tools to providing more sophisticated analyses. They must perform data mining and understand behaviors through analytical models - both industry-oriented and strategy-oriented. There is a huge opportunity for application developers to be analytically focused.

# Simple Interfaces - Whether for an on-demand application, a database or a large network, there is a huge opportunity to improve user interfaces. Increasingly, people with less experience or lower-level skills will be using the systems. Software vendors must work to create less-complex user interfaces, ones not dependent on language skills, yet functional enough to deliver productivity to users with higher skill sets as well. Take OnStar. You press a button and hear a human voice. There is no training required.

# Business Processes - Dell can turn over its inventory 100-times during the same time that HP converts 10-15-times. UPS can handle packages so efficiently that it created a new industry called 'logistics.' FedEx invites customers into its operations to gather critical data. The common thread for these competitive advantages is that they are all driven by business processes. These companies have leveraged a deep understanding of their business operations and converted it into a competitive weapon. Technology to automate these areas will be critical in the coming years."

I think that as always Dr. Prahalad is right on the mark here. Processes are the main differentiator in today's economy focused on operational excellence. And software tools that automate, control, monitor and manage these processes are the key enablers for continuous process improvement.

technorati tags: BPM,, BPMS,, Dr+Prahalad