The Microsoft Business Process Alliance is designed to enhance business process enablement on the Microsoft platform and provides a way for customers to identify companies that have proven their commitment and expertise in one or more specialized areas of BPM that add further value to Microsoft technologies. Metastorm is one of the premier vendors in this select community that offers a proven enterprise-scale BPM suite that serves as a complete platform for organizations that need to manage and improve critical human and system-based processes. By automating mundane tasks and leveraging business rules for basic decision making, Metastorm BPM allows organizations to create user-driven business processes that empower people to collaborate, generate new ideas, and leverage Metastorm’s strategic process intelligence and optimization capabilities to identify and respond to new opportunities.

As a result of Metastorm’s participation in the Business Process Alliance, Microsoft customers will be able to take advantage of Metastorm’s full-featured BPM capabilities plus its enhanced offerings for BizTalk Server 2006 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system, including:

• Metastorm BPM integration with the BizTalk Business Rules Engine (BRE)-Metastorm offers an extension to the BizTalk Server 2006 Rules Designer that allows it to provide test cases and facts that may be used while building policies in BizTalk Server. In addition, the Integration Wizard in the Metastorm BPM Process Designer allows policies to be selected from the BizTalk Server rules repository and run by a Rules stage in a Metastorm BPM process. The Metastorm BPM Process Engine can call these rules and the process will take the appropriate action based on the values returned by the BizTalk 2006 Business Rules Engine;

• End to end process integration across both Metastorm BPM and BizTalk Server-Metastorm BPM’s business processes collaborate directly with process orchestrations in BizTalk Server in a bi-directional fashion (either process can trigger the other).

• Metastorm BPM integration with BizTalk Business Activity Monitoring Services (BAM)-Metastorm users will be able to drive real-time process optimization via collection of event data from BizTalk Server Business Activity Monitoring services. The BizTalk Server and Metastorm integration of BAM data enables business end-users to view and perform business process optimization in a single environment.

• Metastorm BPM integration with the BizTalk Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform-Metastorm can make optimal use of the powerful service integration and composition capabilities in BizTalk Server to integrate/wrap line of business applications, legacy platforms, or custom systems. Metastorm can take advantage of the comprehensive integration adapter suite and web services tools in BizTalk Server to abstract back-end system information out of the business processes.

• Metastorm BPM interface for the 2007 Microsoft Office system-Metastorm provides a platform to more actively engage business users in creative, collaborative, ad hoc, and loosely-structured business processes. These processes are critical to helping organizations reach strategic business goals and require a new way of looking at how people participate in processes and monitor and control their work and activities. Metastorm is using the 2007 Office system to allow documents, messages, presentations, and spreadsheets to be process-enablers and the Office applications to serve as the BPM “client.” The goal is to allow business users and managers to engage in creative and collaborative processes using the tools that are natural in their workday – Microsoft Office Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Excel – rather than accessing a separate interface. This new perspective on BPM allows organizations to extend the benefits of process management to a greater number of people in an intuitive and effective way.

Metastorm also re-confirmed its strategic intent today to align future product development with the .NET Framework 3.0 and Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation, a development platform for the rapid creation of workflow-enabled applications. Metastorm views Windows Workflow Foundation as an important foundational part of Microsoft’s process platform and is exploring plans to deliver an even deeper, architectural-level integration of their technologies and Windows Workflow Foundation in a coming major release. This integration will allow Metastorm BPM processes exposed through Microsoft Office SharePoint products and technologies to be configured using Workflow Foundation and the Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007; and workflows using the Workflow Foundation platform have full access to initiate, control, and coordinate with Metastorm BPM processes.

“The Microsoft Business Process Alliance represents key BPM vendors in the market that are enabling mainstream adoption of People-Ready processes by offering customers a powerful set of end-to-end solutions for automating business processes,” stated Burley Kawasaki, group product manager in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft Corp. “Metastorm was chosen for its ability to simplify complex business processes into a manageable process life cycle and deliver essential value to customers by building on the Microsoft platform.”

Metastorm BPM addresses the full process lifecycle – from modeling and automation to analysis, simulation, and continuous improvement – all through a single interface that shields users from disparate systems including Windows, UNIX, and mainframe-based applications. Metastorm BPM takes advantage of key Microsoft technologies – including the 2007 Office system, Office SharePoint Server 2007, Windows Vista, BizTalk Server 2006, and Windows Workflow Foundation – to empower business users to improve processes and drive business innovation on a global scale.

"Organizations want best-of-breed BPM solutions that offer depth in key areas and provide the flexibility to adapt to unique process needs, while at the same time complementing their existing infrastructure. The Microsoft Business Process Alliance helps organizations narrow the selection process down to the vendors who provide the most robust complement to Microsoft technologies, “ stated Janet Halma, vice-president of business development, Metastorm. “Microsoft’s selection of Metastorm for this alliance is a testament to our proven track record as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and is further substantiated by our numerous customer success stories on a global basis – successes that align the power of the Metastorm BPM suite with the power of Microsoft’s business applications to deliver unmatched results in efficiency, productivity, and process improvement.”

For more information on Metastorm’s participation in the Microsoft Business Process Alliance, visit www.microsoft.com/bpm.