Question: What are some of the ways that EA is evolving and what changes are EA tool vendors implementing to support those changes?

Answer: In my last blog post, I talked about demonstrating the value of enterprise architecture to the business and the increasing expectation and demand for EA to demonstrate business value. The focus on value is a big part of EA’s evolution. I believe this is a result of both the desire to see a return on the EA investment, which many companies have already made, and the need to identify new ways to drive adaptability into the organization in order to remain competitive.

In this post, I am going to discuss  one of the ways EA tool vendors are  supporting organizations in this evolution through an increased focus on leveraging the information captured about the enterprise to drive more informed decisions. Leading EA tool vendors are increasing their capabilities around the use of the data to support better presentation of the analysis, investment options, and organizational impacts to decision makers throughout the organization. To enable these key stakeholders, architects need to support multiple points of view, different levels of detail and a diverse set of information. This data also needs to be presented to users in a format that can be easily understood and linked back to the objectives that drive each functional area.

For too many organizations, the manipulation of the data remains a highly manual process where strategy, organizational, and process models are rebuilt in spreadsheets, PowerPoint slides and documents. This not only wastes the time of highly skilled analysts, but also creates a maintenance nightmare as requests for additional information, refinements in the assumptions, or other alternatives are requested by business users, which inevitably starts the cycle of manual data manipulation again.

I believe the better approach is to drive the presentation of the information directly from the underlying enterprise data – supporting a combination of information from the architecture teams with relevant data from other systems. Graphical displays and drill-down capabilities deliver better clarity into the information to support more informed decisions. Changing an assumption, resource allocation, business process, or goal in one central location can cascade through all the dependencies and immediately be reflected across the enterprise model or compared to other iterations of the project – without the hassles and headaches of manual rework.

If you’re not working from a central repository, and your current EA toolset doesn’t include the ability to translate your enterprise information and business models into information that can be consumed the business users, you should be demanding more. Unlocking information to enable better decisions is one of the ways that EA delivers value back to the business.

In my next post, I’ll be discussing another trend in EA and EA tool evolution – where analysts fit within the organization and what impact that has on what you need from EA tools.

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Question: What sort of value do organizations achieve from Enterprise Architecture?

Answer: Almost every article, blog post, seminar, and book about enterprise architecture (EA) includes some mention of the need for enterprise architects to demonstrate move value to the business.  The truth is that few architects get much practical, actionable advice on how to do that. Many business leaders don’t really understand the value of various frameworks and taxonomies and have a difficult time understanding the attention to detail that architects focus on when developing their modeling methodologies. Not only do business leaders not understand, but many are unwilling to take the time to learn. I’ve seen business mangers glaze over when architects start talking about something as simple as their modeling assumptions.

The most successful companies embrace architecture as a way to instill a discipline that drives the translation of business strategy and vision into the enterprise to facilitate the change needed to reach the broader business goals. Architecture also defines the path for an organization to evolve as it implements those the necessary changes. In today’s hyper-competitive global economy organizations cannot depend on a few “individuals” to instinctively make the right decisions to manage and execute this type of large-scale change. Especially when companies are focusing on objectives like improving customer experience and consistency across all channels of communication, the focus on individual contributions can actually impede the success of the broader goal.

To expand on this point, take a minute to read a recent blog post by HP’s Terry White, which cites research by Dana Gartner, president and principal analyst at Interarbor Solutions, and Jeanne Ross, Director and Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Center for Information Systems Research. Among other important things it suggests that to fully realize the value of architecture, “there’s a cultural shift that takes place in an organization, when it commits to doing business in a new way, and that cultural shift starts with abandoning a culture of heroes and accepting a culture of discipline.” Organizations have to strive for a higher level of maturity and embrace a new culture of discipline before they can fully realize the value of architecture.

This is not to say that organizations with less maturity don’t derive value from EA. Organizations  have demonstrated millions of dollars in savings with architectural initiatives focused on Application Portfolio Management, IT management, compliance and improving the effectiveness of key processes.  So my answer to this question is the value that organizations can achieve from EA initiatives depends on the business problem you are asking your architecture team to solve. Companies who view EA as an essential discipline for business transformation derive significantly more value than companies who take a more narrow view.

In fact, many of our customers who have taken the time to connect with the business teams have also seen an increase in their penetration and acceptance by the organization. However, keep in mind that this requires constant coaching. Realization of a deeper value of transformation can be accelerated when architects become more skilled at identifying key business leaders that understand the value of leveraging best practices, standardization, process optimization, or other capabilities enabled by good architecture. I recently had a conversation with one of our larger customers, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, who told me that he needed to have 150 conversations with key business leaders to open the door to another 150 conversations that he needed to have to drive the kind of value his team was able to deliver.

What do you think? Stay tuned for our next question in this series and feel free to let us know what questions you’d like answered.

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To bring life to those enterprise aspirations, business and technology leaders should look to 2012 as a year to continue improving their collaborative efforts to achieve business change. There are no indications that the new year will bring any relief from the increasing pace of technology and business change, nor the increasing demands from more educated and socially connected customers. 2011 continued the trend toward business driving IT and 2012 offers the opportunity to make this shift pay off for organizations. Many organizations who are focused on bridging the gap between business and IT groups will achieve far more benefits if they fuse these two groups  into business teams working collaboratively to drive transformations.

So, what does 2012 have in store for EA teams?

In its yearly series, Gartner Inc. recently predicted that many organizations will begin to leverage EA tools to drive business value and impact. According to the report, “Gartner Predicts: Opportunities for EA to Lead Business Transformation in Turbulent Times,” December 1, 2011, Phillip Allega, Betsy Burton, et all. “EA practitioners will begin to shift their focus to begin to think about their role differently and, in many cases, employ a new way of working.” With only 40% of EA programs worldwide reporting to IT, EA’s focus must shift from IT and operations to delivery of demonstrable business value.

As I read through the report, I found the following assumptions particularly interesting.

The managed diversity approach
“By 2015, 25% of Global 1000 organizations will produce cohesive EA artifacts that support the diversity of complex business ecosystems.”

When undergoing a business transformation initiative, organizations must account for global operational diversity. According to the report, “the managed diversity style defines choices or options for what projects or customers can leverage without defining only strict, rigid standards. Managed diversity does not mean that there are no standards, but rather that EA planning achieves a balance between the need for a set of standards that help control costs and the need for a diversity of solutions to increase innovation, business growth and competitive advantage across locations that the organization operates in.”

Properly executed, EA can help organizations achieve the delicate balance of identifying and propagating best practices, maximizing technology investments, ensuring compliance with local regulatory bodies, and risk reduction with the flexibility to adapt business systems to compete in global markets. With flexible but defined guardrails, organizations typically find a significant increased speed in their ability to execute when teams are empowered to leverage the elements they need with the guidance  to avoid critical mistakes.

Working together
“By year-end 2014, 50% of Global 1000 organizations will support EA as a collaborative business and IT effort.”

Successful organizations have already started moving their EA teams  out of IT and into the business. Gartner’s survey results indicate that while 68% of EA programs in the US report to the IT organization this picture is already considerably different worldwide. China, who primarily looks to EA for business transformation initiatives, reports to business leadership 76% of the time. This shift in reporting relationships naturally drives changes in the focus and composition of project teams. The complementary nature of skills, perspectives and insights from enterprise architects and business people  can combine to  produce dramatically better results. Organizations cannot drive business growth without carefully selecting the members of the project team.

I particularly appreciated Gartner’s caution, “do not assume that just because business leaders are collaborating and engaging in EA, the effort will be “business strategy driven.” Executive leadership should be mindful that they have defined a clear business strategy that includes actionable directives to provide the context in which these collaborative teams can drive execution.

Increased focus on the decision process
“Through year-end 2014, 60% of organizations will continue to focus EA on assurance, rather than governance.”

According to the report, there are two key challenges when implementing EA governance: 1) they lack training and critical understanding of the topic, and 2) they focus exclusively on control and assurance. This is a problem because EA practitioners often lack an understanding of how the business uses information to makes business decisions. Quite honestly, it is easier to focus on control and standardization because this space is more comfortable for individuals with a technical background. Increasing collaboration between IT and business can be part of this solution but only if architects dig deeper to understand the decision process, the relative value of investment priorities in the context of the business strategy and which standards provide value to the organization. This level of understanding requires more than collaboration between the groups.  It requires a true respect and commitment to understanding how the organization defines and drives business value and how they can then become a part of driving that change.

What is your take on Gartner’s predictions for EA this year? Do you see your EA team driving or reacting to these predicted trends?  Will this be your year to deliver strategic business value? Leave your comments below and we can discuss.

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BPM Addresses Supply Chain Priorities
If your organization competes on the basis of its supply chain then you’ve probably watched with interest the annual Top 25 Supply Chain report from Gartner Research. I follow this report closely each year and have written about it for CMSWire where I’ve shared some case study examples in the past. This year there were a few surprises in the list but it mostly consisted of “old favorites,” including Apple, Dell, P&G, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Microsoft. Four key themes emerged for this year’s leaders – including how they deal with volatility, their approaches to value chain network integration, their focus on sustainable execution and their abilities to orchestrate. Clearly, BPM and business architecture disciplines and technology are useful to address all of these key supply chain themes.

Supply Chain, Classic
It is no surprise then that one of the stories that interested me and many others at last week’s User Summit was the outstanding presentation by Ted Bozarth, a Business Consultant with Coca-Cola Bottling Company.

Ted is a member of the Enterprise Services Group responsible for development of business transformation methodology, co-leading Coke’s Enterprise Architecture effort and providing business consulting services to the Supply Chain area of the business. Ted has impeccable credentials including Project Management certification, a Six Sigma Blackbelt (in the interests of full disclosure, I am a recovering Greenbelt) and a BS in Supply Chain Management from Michigan State University.

His current focus within ProVision is modeling business strategy and linking it to the business architecture (processes, facilities, metrics, etc.) to enable strategy-driven business transformation. This ProVision activity is critical to Coca-Cola Bottling who owns and operates five production centers and 47 distribution centers throughout nine states, operating a direct store delivery (DSD) supply chain model, and sells four cases of beverages per second, including Coca-Cola Classic in 22 different packages or case sizes. Work to date includes: Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Material Flow to Consumer, Supply Chain Metrics Modeling, Point of Sale Materials Management, Transportation Brokerage Management, and Supply Chain Strategy.

Clearly Ted and his team are using ProVision to improve some classic supply chain areas and for a Classic product! I look forward to hearing more from him as he and his team progress in their transformation efforts.

Supply Chain, Country
Perhaps less expected but equally interesting to me was the conversation I had over breakfast last Wednesday during the User Summit with Cliff Nottingham of the US Army Security Assistance Command – “The Army’s Face to the World.” His eCollaboration business process application is serving the country well in support of the USASAC mission to implement Foreign Military Sales (FMS) of defense articles and services to eligible foreign governments.

And lest we think the supply chain is inconsequential to the mission, keep in mind that USASAC is responsible for life cycle management of FMS cases, from pre-letter of request, development, and execution, to closure. The command manages more than 4,655 FMS cases valued at more than $121 billion. Each sale of equipment to overseas customers comprises the same “total package” of quality materiel, spare parts, training, publications, technical documentation, maintenance support, and other services that AMC provides to U.S. Army units. Additionally, each sale is made in accordance with the policies and strategic interests of the U.S. government and materiel is either shipped from U.S. government stocks or from production – their goal is to field a total package and promote self-sufficiency.

We often hear about the public sector interest in learning from and adopting best commercial practices. I think the USASAC story is a great example of where the private sector could learn much about managing and improving their financial and product supply chain from government!

I’d be interested in hearing more stories about using business process and case management to improve supply chains – whether classic or country. I definitely see this as an area that is only increasing in importance in the face of our current economic and market challenges.

___________________________
About Deb Miller
Deb Miller is Director of Market Development, Business Process Solutions for OpenText. Her work focuses on industry strategies for business process improvement. Her career includes more than 20 years of global industry experience with GE. You can read more of Deb’s writings at http://DebsG360.wordpress.com/ and follow her @DebsG360 on Twitter.

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Are you having trouble aligning strategy to execution? Discover how you can establish better visibility across your enterprise to identify and understand the best business improvements for your organization.

In our brand-new Business Transformation Management course, you can learn how to leverage Metastorm ProVision to define and control positive change within your organization. Drive meaningful change across your organization by taking advantage of this webinar and truly understand how you can align your goals, strategies and capabilities with complex business transformation initiatives.

Here are the details for you to register today!
Metastorm Business Transformation Management Course
Date: Thursday, July 14, 2011
Time: 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EDT

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Gartner Keynote: You’ve Got a Seat at the Table: Now What?
As an architect, one of your hardest challenges is to determine how to focus, position, and communicate the business value of enterprise architecture. In this keynote address, Betsy Burton, VP Distinguished Analyst for Gartner will revisit the value of EA and explore the best practices for how you can deliver, demonstrate and drive true business value across your organization.

United Airlines Flies on Enterprise Architecture
Discover how United Airlines uses Metastorm ProVision to analyze, understand and transform its organizational operations. Diana Krohn, Sr. Enterprise Architect for United Airlines and Diane LeBeau, Director of Business Architecture for United Airlines will discuss how United is leveraging enterprise architecture to establish the foundational elements of a business architecture practice, forge business partnerships, create engagement patterns, and build a durable business model repository.

Effective Enterprise Architecture Governance Plays Several Roles in IT Governance
How do you effectively connect strategy to execution? In this session, Julie Short, Research Director for Gartner, will discuss: why EA governance is a critical component in linking business and IT, what is the nature of EA governance, and the best practices that make EA governance effective.

Rapid-Fire: Architecting for the Unknown
Things happen and if you’re not prepared, change can be detrimental to your organization. Betsy Burton will explain how enterprise architects can better prepare for unexpected change and shift their strategic thinking in a way that allows them to seek, model and adapt to new events by leveraging technology, information, people and processes.

PG&E – The Importance of Business Capability and Process Mapping Maturity
Business capability and process mapping are critical components in building a strong, cohesive infrastructure to support your business processes. Metastorm customer, Matthew Duncan, Senior Project Manager for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, will share PG&E’s vision for creating a customer-centric capability and process architecture enabling projects to deliver holistic enterprise business solutions.

BPM – The Catalyst to Deliver Outcomes
It is becoming increasingly clear that EA and business process management (BPM) are inherently and necessarily linked to one another. In this session, Elise Olding, Research Director for Gartner, will cover everything you need to know about BPM and how successful organizations today are achieving valuable results from leveraging the power combination of EA and BPM.

Transforming Business Process and Technology
To be a successful consumer-driven organization today, you must focus on how you can get customer service, business processes, metrics and technology to work together to achieve a target state roadmap. Hear directly from Metastorm customer, Bill Riordan, Global Business Process Manager for HP, about how HP was able to radically transform its customer service operations. Before you go, check out this short video highlighting how HP was able to identify and analyze over 1,500 disparate global processes and improve and consolidate them into 100 universal processes across 132 different countries! 

Enterprise Business Architecture: Uniting Business and IT
Every organization wants to get business and IT on the same page. And, leading organizations know that a critical aspect of uniting these two groups comes from understanding how to leverage enterprise business architecture in a way that engages business leaders. In this session, Betsy Burton will discuss the value of supporting an enterprise business architecture and how organizations can better understand the impact change makes on the people, process, information and technology within their organization.

This year, Gartner is offering tons of valuable opportunities for you to expand your knowledge of enterprise architecture, hear directly from your peers about their success in implementing EA programs and engage in dialogue about the future of EA. Visit their website today to register for any of these sessions or explore other sessions they’re offering.

Be sure to stop by Metastorm’s booth (Booth #1) to view a product demonstration or speak to a representative. If you’d like to schedule a meeting during the conference, stop by the 1:1 scheduling booth or contact Wendy Werve, Director, Analyst Relations for Metastorm at wwerve@opentext.com .

Don’t forget to follow us on twitter @Metastorm and use the event hashtag #GartnerEA.

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With a powerful enterprise architecture system in place, a variety of groups can lead EA initiatives. For instance, one of our customers is a global financial services company who is one of the largest credit card issuers in the United States. To support its global operations, the organization has 10 different mainframes located throughout the world that are responsible for running the company’s complex business applications.

Recognizing the amount of money and time spent maintaining these mainframes, the IT department decided they needed to consolidate and move the mainframes to a more centralized, lower cost location where they could be better managed. The members of the IT team went through a demanding investigative process to analyze the potential to bring the mainframes back to the U.S. At that time, the mainframe systems were outsourced to another company to be hosted and maintained.  After almost four years, the IT team realized that it had not saved any money from this outsourcing initiative.

Realizing the enormous scale of this data and system architecture project and the potential cost savings that the company could achieve, the IT team needed a strong enterprise architecture solution that allowed them to model all of the assets and capabilities of each mainframe in order to better understand the divisions and functions they supported. Using Metastorm ProVision, the team was able to build a portfolio management solution to understand its entire mainframe environment, which includes the hardware, software, applications, communication, support, maintenance and costs.  

The first step was to map out the current environment of its mainframes. During this process, the IT team identified close to 500,000 objects in the repository. After the mapping phase the team built out a consolidated model and was able to reduce the number of mainframes from 10 to four. Additionally, the team was also able to consolidate the subsystems (regions) from 30 to less than 10, which considerably lowered redundant messaging. Working with the Metastorm consulting team, the organization has identified two separate data types within the consolidated mainframes, the customer and the supplier. They have also been able to understand and define specific objects. With the unique data linking supported by Metastorm, if an application is moved the team will know what databases, queue requests, transactions, subsystems, data, file transfers, batch jobs, and software that will be affected.

In this particular example, the IT team led the effort to embark on a full-scale enterprise architecture project. Based on the initial estimates, the company expects to see an estimated $40-100 million savings in the first fully operational year.

Tune in next week as we examine another business case where a totally different group within the organization decided to undertake an EA initiative.

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Of course the answer really depends on the problem you are trying to solve. The reality is that any of these groups can drive an enterprise architecture (EA) initiative when it is supported by a robust enterprise architecture solution.

One of our customers is the largest global discount retail store chain in the world. Rapid global expansion of the customer’s business across North America, Asia, EMEA, and South America, resulted in a significant increase (in the thousands) in the number of applications required to support its growing business demands. Over time, the retailer’s enterprise architects discovered thousands of redundant and overlapping applications that existed in silos, often in largely unknown departments around the world. Not only were these applications redundant, they were costing the organization millions of dollars in maintenance, troubleshooting and licensing fees. Additionally, data was dispersed across dozens of countries, requiring multiple data entry points and different management requirements for individual applications.

The scope of the project was overwhelming. As they began dissecting the initiative, the architects determined they needed an enterprise and business architecture modeling solution to help them truly understand all of their applications. Specifically, they needed to know which applications supported the key functions of their business operations, which applications caused process breakdowns, which applications supported the core capabilities of specific business functions, and which applications were redundant and unnecessary.

After demonstrating to company executives the critical need for an Application Portfolio Management (APM) solution to solve this problem, the architects turned to Metastorm. Using Metastorm ProVision, the architects now have complete visibility and control into their global applications – giving the organization as a whole increased business agility and dramatically decreased costs. With this APM solution, the retailer expects to retire unnecessary applications and the hardware that supports them, simplify its IT support structure, and significantly reduce maintenance costs.

In this instance, the retailer’s enterprise architects pushed the initiative forward. However, as we will see in Part 2 of this series, EA’s aren’t the only people who drive enterprise and business architecture initiatives within organizations. Tune in next week as we explore another business case where a completely different group within an organization drove the EA initiative.

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The evaluation emphasizes how well solutions support EA teams in day-to-day activities, including modeling future-state analysis, road mapping, presentational aids, dashboard analysis and scenario planning.  The Leaders selected in this report have a broad range of capabilities to support EA, combined with the ability to deliver these to diverse group of stakeholders.  See our press release on the report for full details.

At Metastorm, we have focused on incorporating strengths into our software that truly make us unique versus the competition — including ease of use, the availability of frameworks and models for several industries (including telecommunications, insurance, defense and supply chain management), the ability to integrate EA with BPA and BPM, and the delivery of a web-based repository tied to world-class modeling capabilities. 

Adopting an EA tool allows your organization to improve its management, analysis, reporting and communication abilities.  Metastorm ProVision offers a powerful suite of enterprise and business architecture, process discovery and business process analysis, and integrates seamlessly with the Metastorm Enterprise software portfolio – which is the only platform recognized by industry analysts for combining the three synergies of EA, BPA and BPM.  We believe that consistently being positioned as a Leader in industry analyst evaluations for all 3 disciplines is a confirmation of Metastorm’s ability to provide our customers and partners with the best-of-breed solutions, enabling them to effectively drive strategy and change throughout their business operations.

Explore Metastorm’s product page learn out more about Metastorm ProVision.  I also encourage you to review our full list of industry analyst credentials  to gain further understanding of Metastorm’s market leading position in the broader technology landscape of EA, BPA and BPM.

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In an audience poll, 49% of participants said that their current EA and BPM efforts were separate and not aligned, 47% said they were separate but collaborating, and only 4% said they were fully aligned. 

Clay Richardson said that the problem we are seeing within organizations today is that everyone wants to drive strategy in different directions.  BPM teams are responsible for driving strategy for process transformation and EA teams are responsible for driving strategy for IT investments.  One major problem is that the teams do not see the value in the others’ goals and purpose.  EA teams just think of BPM as another technology investment and BPM teams just think EA is all about making pretty pictures.

 This poor collaboration between EA and BPM teams creates a major disconnect between the strategic goals and objectives of organizations and the actual day-to-day execution at the process level.  Clay talked briefly about the hundreds of different frameworks that are designed to bring EA and BPM together to meet a common shared vision – ideally an organization would find a middle ground that incorporates standards but also gives them the flexibility to incorporate their own uniqueness.

Clay explains that capability maps –which are an organizational model associating the business capabilities, processes, and functions required for business success with the IT resources that enable them – are important to have because they identify and prioritize the capabilities that need to change and transform over time.  Business and IT users can utilize capability maps to highlight the weak and broken processes within their organizations and also identify the relationship between bad data and broken processes.  In essence, capabilities serve as a common language that both business architects and process professionals understand.

But organizations are not necessarily taking advantage of capability maps to bridge the EA/BPM gap.  Of the 80% of webinar participants that responded to our second poll question – Where are you with capability mapping? –  50% said they would like to start a capability mapping initiative, 31% said they have already started capability mapping, and 18% said they are currently starting a capability mapping project. 

Clay mentions that more and more BPM vendors are beginning to think about capability models, and Metastorm leads the market in providing native capability mapping and enterprise modeling in its enterprise EA and BPA software which can be directly aligned with processes on the Metastorm BPM platform.

To close the webinar, Neal Lohmann discussed Metastorm’s Business Transformation Practices Framework, which is an executive management framework designed to align the people, process and technology initiatives of an organization closer to its business strategy and vision to help support and promote new, innovative business strategies, while meeting long-term objectives.  The Metastorm Business Transformation Practices framework is founded on capability and operating models, and when aligned to an organization’s own framework supports the development of operating models that accelerate productivity, reduce system complexity, create market driven strategies and enable ongoing change and transformation.   

Neal encourages organizations to align business practices against the Metastorm Business Transformation Practices Framework in order to identify the gaps and mitigate the risk between EA and BPM users.  Establishing a clearly defined vocabulary through capability modeling will allow organizations to operate more effectively and implement successful business transformations.

If you missed the live webinar, don’t worry!  You can view the complete Forrester webinar in the onDemand section Metastorm’s website.   Interested in learning even more about Business Transformation Practices?  You can also listen to the “Leveraging the Business Transformation Practices Framework to Transform Your Business” onDemand webcast, featuring Kevin Haugh and Neal Lohmann.

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“Through ongoing product innovation and a focus on customer success Metastorm has established itself as a market leader and we are fortunate to have a strong network of partners such as iOctane to deliver the Metastorm suite of products and services around the world,” stated Robin Martin, executive vice president of international operations for Metastorm.

“We are delighted to be able to sign this agreement with the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs.  It will allow government agencies to access the Metastorm process modeling, business architecture and process execution technology tools,” said Chris Symes, head of client engagement for iOctane.

Metastorm has a strong history of helping national and local governments increase efficiencies and improve citizen service through the use of business process management (BPM) software.  For example, the City of Norfolk, Virginia recently highlighted the results of its use of Metastorm BPM in an interview with CivSource. Additionally, in a customer video testimonial, the City of Richmond, Virginia discusses how they were able to successfully deploy Metastorm BPM solutions to structure and automate their business processes.  Metastorm BPM provides tools for users to design, develop, monitor, and change processes as their organization evolves.  

Government organizations worldwide have applied Metastorm BPM to business challenges such as compliance, operational efficiency, permit processing, citizen service, case management, grants management, logistics, defense, and disaster response. Many government organizations have turned to Metastorm BPM because it provides access to a wealth of information within organizations and has the ability to bridge silos across different agencies. These are just a few examples of how government agencies are leveraging Metastorm Enterprise software to develop optimal business processes.   Read more government success stories on BPM here.

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Operating on the Microsoft Windows Azure ™ platform, Metastorm M3 provides users with complete benefits of a private or public cloud, including scalability, performance, security, and elasticity.  Metastorm M3 is designed to be modeling for the masses, offering 11 different modeling types—goal, organization, capability, system, process/workflow, activity, rule, project, requirement, location and deliverable— from the Metastorm Enterprise software suite.  Additionally, Metastorm M3 provides 23 modeling objects and viewpoints, going beyond a traditional process model, to give users more comprehensive and holistic business improvements. 

Metastorm M3 empowers businesses by offering a cloud-based environment through which an unlimited number of users can easily improve their organizations using enterprise modeling and collaboration.  Business and IT users are given a rich, social environment in the Cloud where they are able to utilize social networking tools such as chat, whiteboard, model annotation, sharing, recording, and playback to design and implement business practices.  A distinguishing feature of Metastorm M3 is that it offers secure, cloud-based collaborative enterprise modeling for anyone, anywhere.  Metastorm M3 is an excellent tool for mass deployment because it offers built-in modeling guides and real-time help, requiring no prior knowledge of or training in enterprise modeling and no IT setup.  Additionally, its location in the Cloud allows users to gain unlimited access, opening a broader, global collaboration for businesses to achieve the most optimal results.

Metastorm M3 is designed to be used alone or with the Metastorm Enterprise software suite.  Any input, information and data captured in the Cloud is compatible with Metastorm’s enterprise architecture, business process analysis, business process management and integration products to ensure ongoing, shared visibility and the ability to incorporate user input enterprise-wide process improvements.

“Metastorm M3 is designed to go above and beyond any other tool available today to give our customers a distinct edge over their competition,” said Greg Carter, executive vice president of development and CTO of Metastorm.  “Leveraging our years of best practice experience in modeling, architecture strategy and process improvement, we have compiled a rich set of modeling and collaboration tools to empower users on a global scale to participate in business architecture and process definition activities that were once limited to a specific department or skill level.”

What to know more about Metastorm M3?  Check out the social media version of the press release here, complete with screenshots and other related materials.

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Metastorm Smart Business Workspace uses widgets and mashups to deliver a role-based user experience across the entire Metastorm Enterprise software platform as well as other applications.  This single, role-driven interface is designed to meet the needs all types of roles within an organization.  Metastorm Smart Business Workspace transforms the power of Metastorm’s enterprise software by adding a layer of highly personalized user experience, resulting in rapid information access and a more productive, agile work environment regardless of the user’s organizational role. Using Metastorm Smart Business Workspace allows individuals to develop their own personal space, catering to their unique needs.  The software takes into account the user’s job description, skill set, knowledge base, key responsibilities and personal preferences to go beyond traditional interfaces to support the preferences of the user in a single, actionable environment.   

Metastorm Smart Business Workspace provides libraries of widgets related to Metastorm’s enterprise software for enterprise and business architecture, business process analysis, business process management and integration, giving users the ability to easily mash up and integrate data and applications.  The Metastorm Widget Designer enables non-technical users to quickly and easily design and create rich, entirely new and unique widgets and applications that include built-in transaction support, governance and advanced external integration capabilities. 

Metastorm Smart Business Workspace is designed to increase and promote social collaboration within the workplace, taking advantage of popular social networking capabilities to deliver meaningful business results.

“Metastorm Smart Business Workspace will open up a whole new world of insight and productivity for business users and give organizations the mechanism they need to finally leverage social collaboration technologies in a productive way within the enterprise,” said Kevin Haugh, vice president of product marketing and management at Metastorm.   “By delivering role-based, actionable workspaces that can be personalized by each user, Metastorm Smart Business Workspace will make it easier for users to leverage critical information and powerful features of the Metastorm Enterprise software suite – from enterprise modeling to business process analysis to daily process execution and participation – and to make better, faster business decisions.”

Interested in learning more about Metastorm Smart Business Workspace? Check out the social media version of the press release here, complete with screenshots and other related materials.

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It is an honor to be consistently recognized as an innovative, market leader in enterprise software.  At Metastorm, we strive to design and develop products that deliver the best enterprise effectiveness and business results.   Our main priority is our customers and partners, and we are focused on delivering the most optimal software and solutions for their business practices.  We are always pleased in not only our success, but how our products have empowered the business practices of our customers.

Our deep industry knowledge has positioned Metastorm as a leader in enterprise software for both on-premise and SaaS deployments, and we are excited to continue to build and uphold our progressive reputation.  I encourage you to stay tuned to see the exciting things Metastorm will be doing in the upcoming months.

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A recent report by industry analyst firm, Gartner, positions Metastorm as one of the top business process analysis (BPA) vendors in the world. The Gartner “Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools” report positions Metastorm ProVision for BPA as a leader in the business process analysis space, and explains several key differentiators for Metastorm.

The report states that “based on Gartner customer feedback, Metastorm has one of the highest customer satisfaction ratings in the BPA market.” It also recognizes Metastorm for its ease of use and process discovery capabilities, its pre-built connector to SAP, and its integrated market-leading EA and BPM capabilities.

Metastorm also recently released the newest version of its enterprise modeling, business architecture, and business process analysis tool – Metastorm ProVision Version 6.2. Key features of the new release include support for the latest modeling standards, improved ease of use, and extended support for enterprise collaboration, which includes sharing and reuse of models, objects and libraries, as well as enablers for Process Centers of Excellence.

Bill Aronson, founder of the Enterprise Designer Institute, has even authored a fully-illustrated, third party book entitled Metastorm ProVision Version 6.2 Made Easy, in which he shares tips and tricks about the newest release. To learn more visit Bill’s storefront.

For expert advice and instruction on Metastorm ProVision, we currently have several upcoming, hands on Metastorm ProVision training courses. These are offered in person in the United States and the United Kingdom, or via WebEx where they can be accessed from around the world.

And don’t miss our EA and our BPA boot camps. Both will be held in Baltimore, Maryland from May 20th-21st, 2010.

Still wondering what all the buzz is about? Visit our website to request a trial version of Metastorm ProVision (registration required), and see for yourself why industry analysts rank Metastorm ProVision as a leading tool for Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Modeling and Analysis.

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