DARMSTADT, GERMANY—Now that Software AG has integrated the process design technology acquired from IDS Scheer, customers can next expect the German business process management vendor to enable the platform for the cloud, mobility and social collaboration.
Software AG will offer its ARIS process modeling platform and WebMethods execution engine as cloud-enabled offerings so customers can choose how they want to consume the components. “It doesn’t make sense to have the same technology twice, for clouds and for on-premise. That’s a big mistake,” said Wolfram Jost, Software AG’s board member responsible for product strategy and development, to a group of journalists during its annual international media day.
Specifically, Jost said that mistake is committed by cloud vendor Salesforce.com who offers services like Force.com solely as on-demand. “You can’t expect that all customers want to have the total portfolio on-demand,” said Jost.
Software AG finalized the integration of German-based IDS Scheer in early 2010.
Besides building features atop the integrated platform, the company will deliver complex event management and master data management products, integrated in the project stack as well as available standalone. Software AG announced in October plans to acquire master data management vendor Data Foundations.
Jost said enterprise customers have a need to reconcile the different master data types across the organization so they can use it for business intelligence and operational tasks like billing and orders. “If you have master data ten times, you have to clearly say which is the master and you have to make sure all the other data is harmonized to the master,” said Jost.
As for complex event processing, Jost said customers have a need to define, monitor and take action on processes.
Also addressing the media with a longer-term outlook, Karl-Heinz Streibich, CEO of Software AG, said the company’s big plan for the next five years is to provide customers with industry-specific software and expertise atop that horizontal process lifecycle platform.
“This is our master plan for the next five years,” said Streibich.
Reaffirming the company’s revenue target for one billion Euros by year’s end, Streibich referred to Software AG as a “software project company,” the implication being that it offers software, has a battalion of consultants, and maintains partnerships with vendors who implement its technology. Business-to-business customers, said Streibich, want a technology provider who can also implement.
With business process management technology that ties often disparate components like services-oriented architecture, enterprise integration and enterprise architecture, IBM Corp. is the only other vendor that takes that comprehensive approach.
Jost said that what Oracle Corp. and SAP AG are doing at the application layer, Software AG is doing on the process layer by integrating various components.
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