white paper

> foundations of
Progress Savvion

BPM Suite

What Makes Progress Savvion BPM Suite Unique

Dr. M. A. Ketabchi

www.progress.com
 Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Scalability, High Availability, and Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Data Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Open Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Low Total Cost of Ownership. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Comprehensive End-to-end Functionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Support for Business and IT Collaboration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Continued Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Extensive Customer Focus and Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Summary and Concluding Remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

www.progress.com
 1

Introduction
While each version of the Progress Savvion Business Process

Management (BPM) Suite provides more and easier to use functionality

and new product components, certain things do not change from version to
version. These are invariants of our product philosophy and strategy. We call
them the foundations of our products.
In the following sections, we describe these foundations and explain
why they are important and how we achieve them in our products.

Scalability, High Availability,

and Performance
A BPM suite must be scalable enough to handle your increasing
business demands without hitting a built-in limitation.
A BPM suite must be highly available because once you depend on
it for running your business. You cannot afford it to be down. If it goes down
and your business operations continue, there will be inconsistencies between
the status of your processes and the reality of your business.
A BPM suite needs to be high performing because that directly
translates to productivity of your employees.
How do we achieve scalability, high availability and high performance
in our BPM suite?
To start with, it is important to note that Savvion BPM Suite fulfills
all these requirements out-of-thebox. Our customers do not spend a lot of time
and money to set up their scalable and high-availability environment. We use
the standard J2EE application server technologies to achieve out-of-the-box
scalability and high availability. We allow an installation to run on a cluster
of multiple machines in such a way that if one machine fails, the others will
continue, and the failure of a machine in the cluster will be transparent to
users. As the load increases, additional machines can be added to the cluster
to ensure that performance is not adversely affected.
We have made sure that there is no single point of failure in the
runtime environment of our product. As long as our customers ensure the
availability of their databases, we ensure the availability of our BPM system.
To achieve this, we have ensured the messaging tier, server tier, and Web
tier are all highly available.

www.progress.com
 2

To allow our customers to optimize the use of their resources

and thereby reduce their total cost of ownership, they can have multiple
installations on one large machine to achieve high availability, rather than
using multiple smaller machines.
To achieve high performance, we have done extensive optimization
of every aspect of the system in the past ten years. This includes optimization
of database operations, event management and processing, user session
management and task processing, as well as all APIs across the system
components.
Our runtime environment is stateless, and our database access
is optimized. Our customers can easily go beyond high-availability and
provide disaster recovery in their global BPM environment where tasks are
accessed in one continent, data resides in another, and perhaps the runtime
environment is in a third continent.
As we add new functionality and new components to our BPM suite,
we make sure that scalability, high availability and high performance are
not compromised.

Data Architecture
Information is important. The IT community have known this for
years (that is why it is called IT) and have built numerous tools such as
DBMS, OLAP, and reporting tools to define, manage, and use information.
Unfortunately, some newly developed BPM products and BPM product
vendors have ignored the value of information.
We believe in the value of bothprocess and information. We
believe that a business solution platform must provide comprehensive
functionality for managing not just process, but the combination of process
and information. We believe in IPTInformation and Process Technology
and have built our products to enable defining, managing and using business
processes and information, combined synergistically.
No wonder Savvion BPM Suite has a comprehensive data
architecture.
When a process flow is defined, the information flow is defined along
with the process flow. Various techniques to define the information flow are

www.progress.com
 3

provided to allow maximum flexibility in managing process properties, as well

as external data used in the process.
A data element can be made available to all instances of a process
(similar to class variables in objectoriented programming), to all the steps in
a process (similar to instance variables), or to a single step in the process
(similar to local variables). It can be stored for the duration of the execution
of the process instance, or stored permanently as a part of the process
information, or need not be stored as a part of the process (external data)
even though it is made available to the process during its execution. This
is unlike other BPM systems, where information is an afterthought and is
expected to be managed by external systems, or is defined as XML documents
passed from one step to another.
A strongly typed comprehensive data type system is provided to
ensure integrity of data and to facilitate optimal storage of it. Process data is
stored in a structured, open relational database. This ensures that the process
data is available for further analyses and reporting by various tools without
complicated proprietary decoding. This also ensures efficient processing of
the process data because all database optimization techniquessuch as
indexingcan be used to optimize database operations. This is unlike most
other BPM systems where the information is encoded and represented as
blobs in unstructured relational databases (such as binary name-value pair
databases with serialized objects).
While fine data granularity is supported, users are not forced to
decompose aggregations of interrelated data. Aggregate data types, such
as business objects, documents, as well as XML, are supported throughout
the system, as an integral part of the data type system. Fine granularity of
data representation enhances the performance because it avoids repeated
serialization and deserialization of XML blobs. Aggregate data structures
such as business objectsreduce the level of efforts required for building
process solutions and enable the system to further optimize information
access and representation.
Our architecture ensures that reporting operations do not adversely
impact the performance and response times of the system. This is achieved
by properly managing the information in process control and reporting tables.

www.progress.com
 4

Deployment of new process solutions into the existing installation do not

interfere with the already deployed solutions because each process solution
has its own tables. Our architecture allows many active instances (hundreds
of thousands to millions) to function without creating scalability problems
because the instances are not stored and retrieved as serialized large
objects. The fine granularity of information and related optimizations ensure
that relevant information is retrieved very fast, and the runtime computer
resources are used very efficiently.
The integrity of the process information is guaranteed throughout its
lifecycle. Access control is very granular. Only those who are allowed to see
or change a data element will be able to do so. Extensive logical and physical
transaction control functionality built into the system ensures consistency
of the information. A transaction may involve multiple data sources, which
maybe internal or external to the Savvion BPM Suite.

Open Architecture
No product can provide all the functionality you will ever need out-
of-the-box. When you build sophisticated process solutions with your BPM
suite, it is vital that your BPM suite should not only allow you to build your
business process solutions, but it should also allow you to do this without any
overheads and too much work. This should be achieved in such a way that it
should not create future maintenance and upgrade issues.
Your BPM suite is going to be an important component of your IT
infrastructure, but by no means will it be the only one. It needs to have an
open architecture so that it can easily interoperate and integrate with the
other systems in your enterprise.
If your BPM suite is based on proprietary technologies and
representation of information, you will lose the ability to leverage your
existing skills and resources, your business process solutions, and the
information you capture in your BPM suite.
The Savvion BPM Suite does not use proprietary technology or
encoding of information. It provides complete sets of APIs in standard Java
and as Web services which enable you to leverage the deepest functionality

www.progress.com
 5

of the system easily. The open and standards-based architecture

has significant implications with respect to lowering your total cost
of ownership (TOC).

Low Total Cost of Ownership

One of the main reasons why enterprises adopt BPM technology is
cost savings. They want to reduce cost by increasing the efficiencies of their
business operations, as well as by building and maintaining the business
process solutions quickly and with less effort. The total cost of ownership
(TCO) of a BPM suite must not offset these savings. The TCO of a BPM suite,
like the TCO of any enterprise software product, has many cost elements.
Some are one-time costs and some are recurring costs. For TCO to be low, the
recurring elements of the cost need to be low.
For an enterprise BPM Suite, the recurring elements of cost are:

>> Business process solution administration

>> System resources to execute increasingly higher numbers of business
process solutions
>> The time and skills required to build business process solutions
>> Improvements and redeployments of business process solutions
>> Migration of business process solutions from one version of the BPM
suite to the next

Savvion BPM Suite includes an administration portal that allows the

process administrator to efficiently administer and manage business process
solutions and perform tasks such as migration of process instances from one
version of a process solution to another.
Savvion BPM Suite allows optimal use of system resources. In
addition to horizontal and vertical clustering discussed in previous sections,
multiple process solutions can be installed in the same Savvion BPM
container. Because of the data architecture discussed in earlier sections, the
process solutions deployed into the same Savvion container do not adversely
impact each other.

www.progress.com
 6

We strive to reduce the TCO of Savvion BPM Suite from one release
to the next to ensure it remains minimal even though each new version has
more functions and new product components.

Comprehensive End-to-end Functionality

An enterprise BPM Suite needs to provide a wide range of
functionality required for successful implementation of enterprise-wide
BPM initiatives. It is important that the functionality is provided out-of-the-
box. Furthermore, it is critical that the functionality is delivered in such a way
that it is readily accessible by the intended user without any adverse impact
on TCO.
A BPM Suite typically has five groups of users with different skill sets
and objectives:

>> Business analysts who want to define business processes, as well

as analyze their performance and improve them.
>> Line-of-business (LoB) solution developers who want to translate
the business processes defined by business analysts into
business applications.
>> Business and operation managers who want to make sure
their business objectives are achieved. They want to monitor
the performance of processes and improve them by
eliminating bottlenecks.
>> Users who participate in the execution of processes
by performing tasks.
>> Administrators who want to ensure processes are governed properly.
They also perform operations such as back up and tuning as required.

Not only must a BPM provide the functionality these users need, but
it must also provide it in a readily accessible way without adversely affecting
the TCO.
For the purpose of understanding, let us consider an LoB solution
developer who wants a desktop computer that provides all the features

www.progress.com
 7

needed to translate a business process into an executable business process

solution. Such a computer would neither require a DBMS, application server,
nor a live network connection to a server. The desktop computer must enable
the LoB solution developer to work online and off-line without impacting other
developers in the team. On the other hand, business and operation managers
would want to have all the functionality they need through a portal without
needing to install any software on their desktop computers.
Savvion BPM Suite not only provides end-to-end comprehensive
functionality, but it also provides it in a most readily accessible way with
least TCO. The functionality of Savvion BPM Suite is discussed in detail in a
separate document (Functional Architecture of Savvion BPM Suite).
Listed below is a short overview of the functionality of each
component of Savvion BPM Suite:

>> Process ModelerProcess Modeler is a comprehensive BPMN-

compliant (Business Process Modeling Notation) BPA (business
process analysis) tool. It includes extensive process simulation and
documentation functionality. It goes beyond existing BPA tools
because it provides extensive data functionality that allows the
business analyst to capture the data elements of the process, define
inputs and outputs of each step, and specify the interface layout
for human steps in the process. The Process Modeler provides a
unique way of defining business processes using a simple tabular
presentationpatterned after the way people are used to define
projects. This tabular definition and the graphic process flow
diagram are kept in sync at all times. Changes made through one
representation are reflected in the other representation.
>> Process Asset Manager (PAM)Enterprises have many
processes. There is a large warehouse of knowledge and
documentation associated with these processes, which are revised
constantly. It is important to maintain and manage the processes
and collaterals around them as they are important enterprise assets.
PAM enables this with the least possible cost and effort by providing
an enterprise-wide process asset repository. It is important to note
that PAM enables extensive reuse of process artifacts through drag-

www.progress.com
 8

and-drop graphic interfaces. Reuse of process artifacts considerably

facilitates quicker development of process solutions.
>> BPM Studio Once the decision is made to make a process
executable, BPM Studio is needed to convert the process into a
process solution. BPM Studio provides a desktop environment with all
the necessary tools for building process solutions. The process model
maybe developed using the BPM Studio, or if it has already been
defined using the Process Modeler and checked into the PAM,
it can be checked out into the BPM Studio from PAM. The BPM
Studio provides functionality to define presentation flows and
integration points of the process solution. A presentation flow is a
multi-form interface where a transition from one form to another is
subject to logical conditions driven by user interactions. Each form
and the flow among forms are defined graphically. Additionally, the
presentation flow is defined with the same notation and concepts
that are used for defining process models. BPM Studio also enables
business solution developers to deploy process solutions into BPM
Servers for testing and production.
>> BPM PortalAfter deploying a process solution on the BPM
Servers, the process can be instantiated. Once a process is
instantiated, the participants in the process will receive their
tasks, and business and operations managers responsible for the
process can monitor the performance of the process through their
dashboards. Process administrators can manage access rights, users
groups, and process instance migrations from one version of the
process to another if needed. All these users, participants, managers
and administrators perform their functions through the BPM Portal
accessed through intranets and extranets and without installing any
software on their desktop computers.
>> Business Expert (BE)Business Expert is where BPM, BI
(Business Intelligence) and BAM (Business Activity Monitoring)
combine to support real-time interactive reporting, notification and
analytics, thus enabling business and operations managers to

www.progress.com
 9

ensure their business process solutions achieve the intended

business objectives.
>> Business Rule Management System (BRMS)Many business
process solutions havesteps which can best be performed by a
BRMS. When such a step is reached, the process engine needs to
invoke the BRMS, deliver information to it, and get the result back.
Once the result is returned, the process can move forward. Also, the
BRMS can be used to simplify the use of certain BPM functionality
such as rule-based task assignment and intelligent forms.
>> BPM ServersBPM Servers are the runtime environment for
business process solutions. Savvion BPM Suite provides a Process
Server, Event Management Server, Presentation Server, Business
Expert Server, and Business Rule Server. All servers provide unlimited
scalability,high availability, and high performance. They run on most
platforms and in most application servers, support all relational
DBMS, and interoperate with other components in enterprise
IT environments.
>> Business Process Center (BPC)Business Process Center is a
portal that has been designed to make all process-related information
available to everyone in the enterprise to make them more productive
by delivering the information in the context of business processes.
For instance, a purchase manager who needs to approve a purchase
request, will be able to go to BPC and find out guidelines, instruction
manuals, frequently asked questions and other relevant information
which will help the manager perform the task quickly and correctly.
The manager will also know what steps are performed before and
after the approval. Furthermore, the manager can enter additional
information or post questions about the process and the task of
approval. In this way, BPC will turn every enterprise into an online
process community.
>> Project-Oriented Process (POP)POP is a logical integration of
BPM and PPM (project portfolio management). A project-oriented
process (similarly, a process-oriented project) can be defined using

www.progress.com
 10

the tabular process definition provided in the Process Modeler,

together with milestones, phases and project resource allocations.
Once the process (or project) is defined, it can be made executable.
Once it is made executable, project participants will receive their
project tasks as specified by the process, and up-to-date project
statusincluding resource utilization and bottleneckswill be
available to project managers automatically and in realtime through
BPM Portal dashboards and reporting tools, as well as through
Business Expert. Each component of the Savvion BPM Suite is an
independent product, that is, it can be installed and used independent
of other components; however, they are all integrated out-of-the-
box. Furthermore, they all operate on and from the same information
architecture, as well as process representation. Therefore, there is no
impedance mismatch between any two of these components.

Support for Business and IT Collaboration

Business and IT professionals have different skills and interests. Both
are needed to make the technology-enabled enterprises successful. Defining
a business process, analyzing, simulating and improving it are business
functions. Turning a business process into a business application, and then
ensuring that the application runs 24X7 with high response time without
compromising information security, requires IT professionals.
One of the greatest contributions of BPM technology is to encourage,
enable, and support ongoing business and IT collaboration.
For a BPM suite to achieve this important promise of BPM, it must
facilitate the collaboration and ongoing handshake between these two
constituencies.
As described in the previous section, Savvion BPM Suite provides
distinct product components for each community. These role-specific
components ensure the lowest TCO and least overhead for each group to do
their work in most efficient way without the need to learn new techniques
and acquire new skills. Both, business and IT, operate on the same process
model through a common process asset management repository. It is ensured

www.progress.com
 11

that changes made by one community through one set of tools to a business
process, are visible to the other community through the other set of tools.
While the business community is encouraged and enabled to capture
all the information it has about business process, the IT community is required
not to overlook the specification provided by the business community through
the definition of business processes. Both communities are empowered to
work effectively and flexibly, while they collaborate in building business
solutions. The system rigor is not an impediment to the creativity and
efficiencies of either community.

Continued Innovation
The first version of our product was released in 1999. Since then we
have introduced a continuous stream of innovations that have extended the
capabilities of our customers in managing their business processes, especially
mission-critical and differentiating business processes. A brief overview of
some of our important BPM innovations follows. Many of these innovations
have been adopted by other companies who have entered BPM market later.
The first version of the Savvion BPM Suite released in 1999 placed
the emphasis on the M in BPM for the first time. Until then there were no
BPM systems, there were workflow tools for orchestrating human tasks, and
there were EAI tools for orchestrating system tasks. It was management and
bringing people and systems together that gave birth to the BPM industry as
we know it today.
In 2000, Savvion BPM Suite 2.0 provided a strong rule-based
event processing engine. Complex events could now be processed based
on sophisticated correlation rules. We have since improved this technology
to process many events correlated through large rule sets very efficiently.
Suffice it to say that complex event processing has since become an industry
of its own.
In 2001, we announced the concept of three-tier process architecture
consisting of presentation flow, business flow, and integration flow. With
our Savvion BPM Suite Version 3.0, we introduced the Presentation Flow
engine to support the three-tier process architecture. A presentation flow is

www.progress.com
 12

a multi-form interface where transition from one form to another is subject

to logical conditions often driven by user interactions. The three-tier process
architecture reduces complexity of process solutions, enables reuse of
presentation and integrations flows, and affords further optimizations of
business process solutions because each flow can be executed using separate
computer resources.
In 2002, we released Version 4.0. This was the first BPM product
to run on J2EE application servers. Other BPM products followed our lead
and over a period of time re-architected their BPM products to run on J2EE
application servers. Savvion BPM Suite Version 5.0, released in 2003, was
the first BPM product which had a complete BPA tool. We developed this
component in our product to support the concept of process functionality
continuum. By then, it had become obvious to us that the process monitored
need to be the exact process executed and modeled. If a process monitored
is not the same as the process modeled, it will be very hard to compare the
actual performance metrics of processes with the expected performance
metrics. Again, other BPM products followed our lead and over a period of
time introduced a process modeler as a component of their BPM suite.
In 2004, we introduced the notion of BPM userology. BPM userology
recognizes and clearly defines five user communities of BPM: business
analysts, LoB business application developers, business and operation
managers, process participants, and process administrators. We revisited the
packaging of Version 5.0 to reflect BPM userology and to ensure that each
one of these user groups is provided the functionality they need in the most
readily accessible way possible. This had significant implications with regards
to TCO and ease of use of BPM.
By 2005, we had many customers who had developed many
process solutions. When we analyzed the amount of time and effort they had
spent to build their process solutions, it became clear that they had spent
a large percent of development time on building user interfaces for human
tasks. To help reduce the time and effort required to build process solutions,
we introduced a complete formbased GUI builder in Savvion BPM Suite
Version 6.0.

www.progress.com
 13

After the release of Process Modeler, some of our customers had

developed hundreds of process models. To help them maintain these process
models, we introduced PAM in 2006 as a part of Savvion BPM Suite
Version 6.5.
In 2007, we released Business Expert with Savvion BPM Suite
version 7.0. This was motivated by the observation that our customers
wanted to go beyond analyzing process information only. They wanted to
analyze the business information related to the process together with process
information. Business Expert enabled them achieve this.
Version 7.5 of Savvion BPM Suite includes two new and innovative
components: BPC and POP. As we discussed earlier, BPC expedites the journey
to become process-centric for enterprises because it provides everyone in
the enterprise with process information in the context of processes. POP
is grounded in the realization that many processes have characteristics of
projects and many projects have characteristics of processes. In other words,
BPM and PPM have a significant overlap, and there are no reasons for why
they cannot be done with the same system.
We will continue expanding the footprint of our product with release
of new product components. We will also continue introducing new BPM
concepts. As in the past, many of these components and concepts will be
motivated by the experiences we will gain as a result of working closely with
our customers and partners.

Extensive Customer Focus and Experience

Great enterprise software products are not built by innovative
vendors alone. Leading enterprises that adopt an enterprise software product
as a customer and push the envelope of product capabilities continuously
and use it in ways that the vendor could not have realized play a very critical
role in the development of great enterprise software products. We have
been fortunate that many leading enterprises have adopted our BPM suite
almost from day one. We have worked with them closely, we have listened
to their feedback carefully, and we have benefited from their first hand
experiences. We have learned where and how to improve our BPM suite from
our customers experiences. The technologies and techniques that we have

www.progress.com
 14

used to build our BPM suite, not only have been motivated by our customers
feedback, but have also been tried and proven by them.
We plan to continue working closely with our customers to meet
their challenging requirements and at the same time to further improve our
BPM suite.

Summary and Concluding Benefits

During the man years we have been in the business of BPM we have
enhanced the functionality of our products by developing new features and
functions and have expanded the footprint of our product by releasing new
product components as part of the Savvion BPM Suite.
However, we have made sure certain fundamental requirements
are never overlooked. These fundamental requirements are:

>> Scalability, high availability and high performance

>> Comprehensive data architecture to bring process
and information together
>> Providing open architecture
>> Ensuring lowest total cost of ownership
>> Comprehensive end-to-end BPM functionality
>> Encouraging and supporting business and IT collaboration
>> Continuous innovation
>> Working closely with our customers and learning from them

Our customers have told us that these fundamentals are critically

important for the success of their BPM initiatives. It is important to note that
retrofitting a BPM suite that has been designed without these fundamentals
in mind is a non-trivial task. Such products, while they may achieve initial
success, will fail over time. Such retrofitting is not only very time-consuming
for vendors, but it is also painful and expensive for customers.
It is also important to note that there are situations where initially
a subset of these requirementsmaybe of interest. For example, if a company

www.progress.com
 15

wants to automate an employee on-boarding process, scalability, high

availability, and perhaps, even open architecture may not be very important.
However, a BPM suite that is chosen for such an employee on-boarding
process will not meet the enterprise BPM requirements. Companies that
select such departmental BPM suites, are forced to revisit their selection of
BPM within a couple of years and conclude that it would have been better if
they had selected an enterprise BPM suite right from the start.
We have made commitment to our customers not to ever overlook
these fundamentals.

www.progress.com
Progress Sof t ware
Progress Software Corporation (NASDAQ: PRGS) is a global software company that enables enterprises to be operationally responsive to changing
conditions and customer interactions as they occur. Our goal is to enable our customers to capitalize on new opportunities, drive greater efficiencies, and
reduce risk. Progress offers a comprehensive portfolio of best-in-class infrastructure software spanning event-driven visibility and real-time response,
open integration, data access and integration, and application development and managementall supporting on-premises and SaaS/cloud deployments.
Progress maximizes the benefits of operational responsiveness while minimizing IT complexity and total cost of ownership.

Worldwide Headquarters
Progress Software Corporation, 14 Oak Park, Bedford, MA 01730 USA
Tel: +1 781 280-4000 Fax: +1 781 280-4095 On the Web at: www.progress.com

For regional international office locations and contact information, please refer to the Web page below:
www.progress.com/worldwide
Progress, Savvion, and Progress Savvion Business Manager are trademarks or registered trademarks of Progress Software Corporation or one of its affiliates or subsidiaries in the U.S. and
other countries. Any other trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Specifications subject to change without notice.
2010 Progress Software Corporation and/or its subsidiaries or affiliates. All rights reserved.
Rev. 03/10 | 6525-129665