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Intalio Inc. and Fuego Inc. are leveraging XML in forthcoming upgrades to their respective BPM software that ease not only the creation of business process models but also the execution of those models.
Intalio, of San Mateo, Calif., late this month will announce Version 2.0 of its Intalio n3 Business Process Management System. The upgrade boasts a new XML-based programming language called XPage, which company officials said will speed development of user interfaces.
XPage, which is part of n3s Director module, replaces the use of up to seven languages that are required for the development of interactive, Web-based user interfaces, Intalio officials said.
Also new are enhanced load balancing and failover capabilities in n3s Server component that enable users to deploy more than one server.
The Designer module was enhanced in Version 2.0 with an Integrated Process Development Environment, which enables users to create graphical process flows without writing additional code for messaging, data transformations, distributed transactions or business rules. Designer also dynamically looks within those systems and exposes the back end as a graphical XML Schema.
Designer also enables developers to reuse processes through a Web Services Choreography Interface.
Meanwhile, Fuego is readying Version 4.5 of its namesake BPM platform, which will model and automate processes for banking, health care and manufacturing companies with pre-configured process templates and integration components.
Fuego uses XML in its architecture, particularly on the process modeling side of the house, where the company uses XPDL (XML Process Definition Language) as the underlying XML schema.
Version 4.5 of Fuego for banks will be available Jan. 29, while a health care edition is due Feb. 10. Upgrades include new functionality that lets users orchestrate Web services against the process model through the internal and external invocation of services.
At the same time, pre-configured process templates and integration components that are specific to each industry will be added to the platform, said officials from Fuego, of Addison, Texas. For example, templates for loan organization, credit card processing and clearing, and straight-through processing will be added to the banking version of 4.5.
As companies integrate applications with partners, there is more of a need to manage business processes to ensure that all steps in a supply chain are automated. XML, as the underlying message definition for BPM, is an improvement over electronic data interchange, an earlier standard for business-to-business document exchange, said John Wheeler, CIO at Nova Chemicals Corp., of Alberta, Calgary.
“XML updated that, made it more of a business language and extended BPM to the whole organization,” said Wheeler, who uses IDS Scheer AG process modeling software.
Fuego user Mark Evans, CIO at Tesoro Petroleum Corp., is looking at Version 4.5. He uses Fuego to automate process integration between the San Antonio companys SAP AG software and in-house applications.
“Within Fuego all the process modeling is done,” Evans said. “You can design a process, and once you have that, you create a Java workflow script that allows you to orchestrate interactions between people, or system-to-system.”