Alphalogix, a long time IBM Business Partner, announced its validation for the IBM SOA Specialty for its electronic workflow solution, Tasica Forms Director 3.1. With several other validations under its belt, including technical validations for IBM WebSphere and IBM Lotus, Tasica Forms Director is now certified due to its’ JSR 168 portlet compliancy for IBM WebSphere Portal and Portal Express and its’ use of the Eclipse integrated development environment and XML based open standards.

Tasica Forms Director 3.1 is a business process automation tool that streamlines organization’s operational workflow, replacing paper-based and manual processes and reducing day to day costs. Forms Director allows users with no formalized IT or programming experience to design and perform electronic workflows with logic-based rules and approval systems in a highly graphical, open standard based interface. With an open standard foundation, Forms Director can integrate with XML electronic form formats and authoring tools such as IBM Lotus Forms. Based upon the data gathered in the electronic forms, users can make unlimited amount of workflow decisions and read and write to any backend relational legacy databases in real time.

According to Sandy Carter, Vice President, SOA and WebSphere, IBM Software Group, “SOA is an increasingly important business requirement for organizations because of the business flexibility it enables."

By using an Eclipse integrated development environment plug-in, Tasica Forms Director allows business flexibility as it extends SOA development by enforcing the interoperability between different systems and programming languages. With this Eclipse foundation, users can design multiple workflows by creating steps with attached forms, variable decisions, LDAP directory look ups, multiple workflows and personal notifications via email or SMS text messaging. Built on the J2EE platform, Forms Director can also integrate with .Net environments as well as other web based applications extending existing business processes and connecting them through common data repositories.

In a recent article describing the importance of portal services to SOA Gartner was quoted, saying “For many organizations enterprise portals will be a first step toward an SOA”. Gartner was also reported to project that “an enterprise portal will be the first major application of SOA concepts for more than 50% of enterprises.”

Tasica Forms Director Portlet Pack, allows companies to take this first step as they connect Tasica Forms Director’s easy to use, rapid workflow development tool and engine to their JSR 168 compliant IBM WebSphere Portal or WebSphere Portal Express environment. With this extension of value, organizations can start to leverage an SOA environment as scalable role-based workflow processes are performed in the same single interface along side other customized applications. As simple or complex workflows are created to run in a portal environment, integration with data from pre-existing systems to web services and other custom composite applications enhances IBM WebSphere Portal’s powerful SOA foundation.

“The Tasica brand of workflow products were and are continuing to be developed with a forward thinking foundation, always looking toward the future of Business Process Automation,” said Bob McCandless CEO of Alphalogix. “Interoperability between platforms and the ability to link electronic workflow to powerful portal and SOA environments leads businesses comfortably into a complete end to end information technology system that will future proof and streamline their business processes and enhance their overall internal, customer and partner relationships.”

For additional information about Tasica Forms Director and its integration with IBM Lotus Forms, IBM WebSphere Portal or other products and services provided by Alphalogix, please contact Victoria Sauer.