eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Business process management (BPM) technology helps organizations with operations management issues and processes. Among the vendors that develop and support BPM technology is Red Hat, which released its Red Hat Process Automation Manager 7 update on June 19.
The new release extends the BPM platform to Red Hat’s OpenShift Kubernetes container platform. It also adds new dynamic case management capabilities for different types of operational workflows. The core business process automation functionality in Process Automation Manager 7 is based on the open-source jBPM project.
“When organizations can use a tool like Red Hat Process Automation Manager to build applications that automate business processes and workflows, they can automate not only individual business decisions, but the business itself,” Meg Foley, product marketing manager of business automation at Red Hat, told eWEEK.
A subscription for Red Hat Process Automation Manager also includes a full subscription to Red Hat Decision Manager, which is based on the open-source Drools project, as well as complex event processing and business resource planning capabilities based on the open-source OptaPlanner project. Red Hat Decision Manager is available under a separate, stand-alone subscription, Foley said; however, the product is also packaged with Red Hat Process Automation Manager, so a customer buying the latter will receive both. Red Hat Decision Manager includes a business rules engine and functionality for complex event processing, she added.
“[Red Hat Decision Manager] can be used to automate individual business decisions, or to solve and optimize complex business resource planning scenarios—things like employee shift scheduling or delivery route optimization,” Foley said. “Red Hat Process Automation Manager extends those capabilities by enabling customers to automate multiple decisions as part of a broader business process. “
Foley added that Red Hat Process Automation Manager also includes a UX platform that enables customers to rapidly develop end-to-end process automation applications.
Dynamic Case Management
Among Process Automation Manager 7’s new features is support for dynamic and unstructured processes.
“Where dynamic case management shines is in optimizing processes that are not easily described with a simple BPMN [Business Process Model and Notation] diagram and will change based on information contained within each particular case,” Foley said. “For example, fraud detection may be a process that will take different paths depending on the amount, the country, laws, etc.”
Red Hat Process Automation Manager has now also been optimized for the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform. That means an organization’s business rules and processes can be structured as microservices and deployed in containers, essentially plugging them directly into a DevOps pipeline, she said.
“Further, the advantage of cloud-native and OpenShift is that both IT developers and business analysts can use the same tools to build customer-focused apps with the benefit of IT governance,” Foley said.
Looking forward, Foley said Red Hat is continuing to develop features that enable business analysts to quickly build, test and deliver customer-focused apps, as well as monitor and optimize their digital processes.
“Broadly speaking, we see the industry trending toward applying various open-source artificial intelligence solutions to improve the effectiveness of the knowledge workers participating in automated processes, so we are watching that closely to determine the impact and opportunities for our customers,” she said. “Red Hat Process Automation Manager is focused on enabling both IT and business users to build cloud-native, container-based process automation apps as part of a customer’s digital transformation journey.”
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.