Skyward Prepares ‘BPM-Aware’ App with Progress OpenEdge BPM Platform 
Workflow management system provider Skyward Inc. is using Progress Software’s OpenEdge BPM platform to bring business processes directly into their application. The Progress OpenEdge BPM platform, announced last year, infuses the OpenEdge database with capabilities for modeling, monitoring and management to easily build BPM-aware apps.
Workflow management system provider Skyward Inc. is using Progress Software’s OpenEdge BPM platform to bring business processes directly into their application. The Progress OpenEdge BPM platform, announced last year, infuses the OpenEdge database with capabilities for modeling, monitoring and management to easily build BPM-aware apps.
Skyward Workflow Manager will provide end-users with tools and customizable templates to support workflows processes. The UI will also be similar to existing Skyward applications, according to Skyward’s president Scott Glinski.
The Skyward Workflow Manager focuses on managing K-12 school system operations, and replaces paper-intensive processes to better identify decision-making bottlenecks and simplify operations management for reviewing, approving and processing many tasks and forms.
The Progress OpenEdge BPM platform combines the power of the OpenEdge database with capabilities for BPM modeling, monitoring and management from Progress portfolio. OpenEdge also provides devs tools to let them quickly model and deploy business processes within an application.
In turn, OpenEdge ISVs can build BPM-aware business applications for both on-premise or cloud-based SaaS deployment. For their part, end users will get the power to change business processes and models directly from within applications.
Progress’ OpenEdge BPM platform aims to let ISVs easily add more capabilities directly into their applications. "ISVs are focused on providing more flexibility in the use and deployment of ‘business process-enabled’ applications,” Colleen Smith, Progress vice president of product marketing, said in a statement. The platform also lets ISVs provide users the capability to adjust and modify their processes, she added.
A Drill-Down Into the Architecture
of the Progress’s OpenEdge BPM Platform
“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 at the debut of the OpenEdge BPM platform last year.
Ketabchi is also the founder of Savvion, a leading BPM firm that Progress acquired in 2010. He described the OpenEdge BPM platform architecture as “a BPM-enabled application development platform that will make business process and applications more aware of each other [and is] the key to providing users and application developers much more power to adapt both applications and processes to business needs,” Ketabchi told IDN.
"ISVs are focused on providing more flexibility in the use and deployment of ‘business process-enabled’ applications.”
Colleen Smith
VP, Product Marketing
Progress Software
The OpenEdge BPM platform comes with a complete high-level business language, called ABM, or Application Business Language, which gives devs a lot of control over ways to use information as part of an ongoing application development environment, Ketabchi said.
The OpenEdge BPM platform architecture also saves ISVs money, by removing the need to license outside databases. It can also avoid delays from parallel development, where devs often worked on a BPM’s database component separate from the business process modeling and deployment, Ketabchi added.
Skyward has been serving administrative needs of K-12 school managers since 1980. Skyward’s OpenEdge BPM-based offering will be available in August 2011, company officials said.
