Savvion: exploiting business frameworks

This is one in a series of articles I shall be producing based on a major piece of research being undertaken by Bloor Research on the BPMS market. My thanks go to Dr. Ketabchi, President, CEO and Founder, and Ajay Khanna, Senior Director of Product Marketing & Management of Savvion for the information given during the survey. Savvion are one of the early developers and exploiters of BPMS technology along with Metastorm and Lombardi. In September 2008, Savvion released version 7.5 of their BusinessManager Suite. This announcement has been followed by series of other announcements about business frameworks. In this, the first of 2 articles, I will introduce Savvion to those of not familiar with the company and their product.

For those of you unfamiliar with Savvion as a company let me give you a short overview. The company was founded in 1994, with the first product release being in 1999. Savvion is headquartered in Santa Clara, California with product development also taking place in India. The company is perhaps less well known in Europe than in the USA, but it claims to have 22 of the Fortune 100 in its customer base of over 300. Savvion has developed a high profile set of systems integrator partners, who include Accenture, Bearing Point, Infosys, Satyam and Wipro. In addition Savvion has technology partnerships with all the key technology companies including SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Sun and HP. Savvion’s stated goal is “to be to business processes, what Oracle is to business data, and Microsoft is to desktop automation, with the customer focus and quality standards that go beyond that of both Oracle and Microsoft”. What an interesting thought!

BusinessManager Suite Overview
Lets us take a short look at the architecture of Savvion BusinessManager suite before looking at the new features of 7.5.

Figure 1: Savvion BusinessManager Suite

Savvion BusinessManager Platform consists of the following components:

• BPM Studio is the Windows Eclipse-based process model development tool based on Java and XML. It is comprised of 7 key components.
  • Process Designer provides a centralised user interface for assembling process driven applications. The patent pending Tabular View has been developed to provide a simpler way for business users to input information about processes.
  • Rules Wizards Framework allows users to implement rules that can be used in a current process, a specific work step, or combined to create new rule sets.
  • Component Palette is based on BPMN notation and provides a single pane for easy diagramming of business process flows.
  • Resource Browser provides an overview of processes and what is in a particular project. Repository Browser provides access to the Reusable Components Library.
  • Forms Designer enables users to customise the default presentation page that users see on-screen for each process work step.
  • Simulation Engine allows users to simulate a process business flow
  • Integration Adapter Framework with rich set of adapters connect to any legacy system.
• BPM Server is the runtime environment of the suite. Written in Java and able to run on Windows, UNIX or Linux using IBM and Oracle (BEA) app servers and Microsoft, Oracle or IBM DBMS, the product consists of 3 runtime engines (process, rules and web services), a repository manager and 2 frameworks (adapter and portal).
• BPM Portal is the web-based central point of access for controlling BusinessManager applications. Access is controlled by user type and role. The functions are grouped into 3 modules: Home, Management and Administration. The Home module is the primary interface for any user and includes access to such pieces as the Task Manager, dashboards, the Process Concierge and process status view. Managers use the Management module to launch applications; start, monitor and control process instances; and create, query and analyze data in the form of reports, graphs, and spreadsheets. The Administration module allows administrators to modify configuration parameters, manage user/group access, install/uninstall applications and publish applications as Web services.
• Savvion BusinessExpert is the BAM + BI component of BusinessManager suite. The BusinessExpert Portal consists of Metrics Manager and Analysis Assistant sub-modules that allow the users to create Business Metrics and interactive multidimensional reports. The BusinessExpert engine processes events generated by the Process Engine for information relevant to the metrics and analyses created by the business user and presents the information to user via dashboards. Access and metrics definition is by web browser.

Savvion Process Modeler is a stand-alone PC business user orientated process designer tool. Models created through this tool can be viewed and extended through BPM Studio. It has the same underlying capabilities as BPM Studio.

Savvion Process Asset Manager extends the capabilities of Process Modeler by enabling teams of business analysts to collaborate on process modelling projects using a process repository. This stores, manages and version-controls libraries of process models, process simulations and process documentation.

In the second article, I will look at the new release and assess Savvion’s USPs.