Principal features of webMethods BPMS include:

Guided Process Improvement: Users will benefit immediately from a streamlined discovery process and more intuitive business reporting as webMethods’ business activity monitoring (BAM) capabilities have been greatly enriched with the new release. The underlying architecture has also been enhanced to deliver a tenfold improvement in scalability. webMethods’ BAM product is available as a core component of webMethods BPMS as well as on a standalone basis.

With more advanced business visualization and interactive, 3-D graph-based reporting of real-time performance, users can take advantage of these enhancements to more easily understand the state of their ‘as is’ process. In the case of continuous process improvement, as defined by methodologies like Six Sigma, this actionable insight, in the form of event correlation, automated baselining, and business impact analysis, is used to identify subsequent improvements. In the context of exception management and similar scenarios, it can be dynamically and continually applied to detect, diagnosis and remediate defective processes, transactions, and orders with automated alerts used to ensure that corrective action is taken in a timely manner.

Unified Design Environment: A new, Eclipse-based modeling environment improves productivity and collaboration through the use of a single, fully-unified toolset for addressing the entire process lifecycle. Business analysts, developers and other users can leverage the role-based personas offered by this new platform to more easily and instinctively measure, model, orchestrate, manage and automate, and improve business processes. Within this unified design environment, every component of a process – models, swim lanes, Key Performance Indicator (KPI) trees, step transitions and user interfaces – can be depicted and configured into unique business processes from the desktop. Supported standards include BPMN and BPEL for process models with integrated testing used to identify potential break points in the run-time process as a means for ensuring flawless execution at implementation.

Codeless Assembly of AJAX-Based Applications: With the adoption of AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) as the standard user interface (UI) for webMethods Fabric, webMethods BPMS also delivers a significantly enriched user experience. Specific benefits include the elimination of latency from the user experience, which improves productivity while streamlining access to real-time information. Through the use of a ’drag-and-drop’ library of more than 200 AJAX-based UI elements, end-users can quickly create composite applications and process interfaces without the need for additional coding. With built-in support for key standards, including JSR-168 and WSRP, these applications can be subsequently reused across nearly any implementation.

Sophisticated Task Management: webMethods BPMS supports advanced activity routing encompassing large workgroups with varying roles and responsibilities. Process actors can leverage role-based, end-user applications to streamline access to needed information while simplifying task management and execution. Other key features include notification, delegation and ad hoc routing; integrated document management and other collaboration tools; and full audit capabilities.

Industry-Leading Business Rules Management: Recognizing that the lifecycle for business rules is just as complex as those for business logic, webMethods BPMS also incorporates proven business rules management from Fair Isaac as a key feature. Using the Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor business rules engine, highly complex scenarios involving multiple sets, arrays and string manipulations can be created, managed and deployed by business users from the desktop. This auditable approach improves accountability by providing process owners with the ability to directly manage key decision criteria.

Semantic Metadata Library: Based on the acquired semantic inferencing technology of Cerebra, the semantic metadata library offered by webMethods BPMS leverages the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to automatically establish relationships and dependencies between assets. As a result, users can easily initiate concept-based searches across broad classes of IT assets, including services, process models and KPI trees, business rules, templates, and interfaces, to find the right asset for a specific application. This works to shorten development cycles while fostering greater reuse of existing artifacts across multiple projects and implementations.

“webMethods BPMS has been optimized for the constant change associated with complex business processes spanning multiple users and systems,” said Kristin Muhlner, executive vice president for Product Development, webMethods, Inc. “With business activity monitoring guiding process improvement, enterprises can more readily detect, diagnose and resolve operational bottlenecks. Alignment with the business is enhanced through the use of a common, role-based development platform as a means for ensuring more productive collaboration. Our embrace of a lifecycle approach for managing IT assets makes these resources easier to locate, reuse and maintain. Leveraging the underlying integration and Web services management offered by webMethods Fabric, these assets can ultimately be more readily redeployed, as new processes are transparently enacted without the need for an intermediary. Collectively, these approaches allow IT to deliver faster development, improved accountability, greater efficiencies and continuous improvement.”