Progress Software Brings BPM Capabilities to OpenEdge Database, Apps 
Progress Software is looking to lower the cost and complexity of end-to-end BPM projects with an innovative approach to allow ISVs to BPM-enable business applications directly. The Progress OpenEdge BPM initiative looks to cut DBMS licensing fees and reduce deployment complexity.
Progress Software is looking to lower the cost and complexity of end-to-end BPM projects with an innovative approach to allow ISVs to BPM-enable business applications directly. The Progress OpenEdge BPM initiative looks to cut DBMS licensing fees and reduce deployment complexity.
Under the plan, the Progress OpenEdge database gains BPM modeling, monitoring and management capabilities from the Progress BPM portfolio. In turn, OpenEdge ISVs can build BPM-aware business applications for on-premise or cloud-based SaaS deployment.
OpenEdge devs also will receive tools to let them quickly model and deploy business processes within an application. End users will get the power to change business processes and models directly from within applications.
OpenEdge BPM Initiative:
Making Apps, Business Process More Mutually Aware
“In my opinion, this is going to revolutionize the application market because what we have put together is one seamless environment for defining processes, business rules, information and process – all in a single application development environment.” Dr. M. A. Ketabchi, Progress vice president of strategy told IDN. Ketabchi is also the founder of Savvion, a leading BPM firm that Progress acquired earlier this year.
“This has been my favorite project at Progress recently, because it helps so many partners and customers,” he said. “OpenEdge developers can build with a BPM-enabled application development platform that will make business process and applications more aware of each other. Users will also be able to improve their processes more readily.”
“This is going to revolutionize the application market because we have put together one seamless environment for defining processes, business rules, information and process – all in a single application development environment.”
Dr. M. A. Ketabchi
Vice President - Strategy
Progress Software
One key that makes the OpenEdge-BPM marriage of technologies work so well, Ketabchi said, is that under the covers, the OpenEdge database also provides a complete high-level business language, called ABM, or Application Business Language. ABM gives devs a lot of control over ways to use information as part of an ongoing application development environment, Ketabchi added.
Reducing the Cost of End-to-End BPM Architecture
One key driver for the OpenEdge BPM initiative came directly from customers, Ketabchi told IDN.
“The database had become a major inhibitor to delivering end-to-end BPM projects, especially for mid-market firms,” he said. “In fact, we noticed the cost of licensing databases for multiple locations was actually higher than the cost of the original BPM project – including app servers, hardware and the BPM software.”
Ketabchi explained that a customer can often need multiple (and separate) databases to run end-to-end BPM when a business process needs to conduct data lookups, interact with triggers and events, or do other process alignment functions. His team set out to find ways to eliminate these expenses and complexities for BPM projects.
The result was the Progress OpenEdge BPM initiative, which integrates the application with all other necessary BPM elements. “This architecture is the key to providing users and application developers much more power to adapt both applications and processes to business needs,” Ketabchi told IDN. The new architecture also removes the need to license outside databases, and avoids delays from parallel development, where devs often worked on a BPM’s database component separate from the business process modeling and deployment, Ketabchi added.
“We shared this strategy with our OpenEdge partners and they’ve never been so excited,” Ketabchi told IDN.
One long-time Progress OpenEdge ISV put it this way. “As this technology emerges, we will be able to harness process and rules functionality to deliver new capabilities within QAD Enterprise Applications,” said Pam Lopker, President and Chairman for QAD, a leading provider of enterprise applications for manufacturing, in a statement.
All 2,500 Progress OpenEdge partners are eligible for the program.
