Intelligent Enterprise

Pegasystems has introduced software tools for connecting business process management systems across corporate departments.

The Federated Business Frameworks for Pegasystems' SmartBPM Suite comprises four components that enable system administrators to create a business process and workflow that incorporates processes running across different operational units. The tools, introduced this week at the PegaWorld Agility user conference in Washington, D.C., also offer a central management view of the touch points of connected applications and a unified work portal that employees use to access newly defined processes.

The new components include the Integrated Work Manager that a system administrator uses to view and connect SmartBPM applications across an organization and to build the portal. The Business Information Exchange pulls information from multiple BPM applications and makes it available in an XML format for use in business intelligence systems and integrated process reporting.

The remaining new tools include the Virtual Enterprise Repository and the Autonomic Event Services. The repository offers a library of ready to use Web services set up by system administrators. Process analysts or line of business managers can browse the repository and incorporate services into a workflow diagram. The model can then be deployed on the SmartBPM engine.

Finally, the Autonomic Event Services monitors the health of the total BPM system by tracking the performance of the application touch points. The software can spot and diagnose problems and send alerts to system administrators when performance falls below a preset threshold.

The event services component is currently available. The Integrated Work Manager will be part of SmartBPM 5.5, which is scheduled to ship by the end of the year. The repository and information exchange will be sold separately later in the year. Pricing was not disclosed.

Earlier this month, Pegasystems introduced with it called a "platform as a service," which is a software layer on top of its BPM engine that makes it possible to replicate a process instance and deploy it to a separate business unit.