Enterprise Software's Hot Topics: BPM And Compliance

Enterprise software comes in all sizes, shapes and forms. But if there's one common denominator in today's software landscape, it's about helping end users provide better processes.

There are many factors driving that need. In many cases, it's mandated by such government regulations as Sarbanes Oxley, the Patriot Act and HIPAA. In addition to addressing compliance, though, engaging in better business processes is the key to boosting profits.

Business-process management (BPM) is top of mind for two of the three finalists in the Enterprise Software category of this year's VARBusiness Tech Innovators Awards. BEA Systems and Ultimus' Adaptive Discovery both address simplification of the development of applications through registries intended for the management and discovery of software components.

BEA says AquaLogic is an open platform for deploying and managing service-oriented architectures, allowing a variety of software services that are Java, .Net-based or legacy code to be composed once and leveraged anywhere. In so doing, customers can have more efficient best practices.

Taking that a step further, Ultimus' Adaptive Discovery lets customers develop automated business processes without requiring extensive process maps or models, but rather a server that discovers when a process is not defined and notifying a process expert with a module that helps determine what the workflows and rules should be.

Compliance and BPM don't always fall into the same bucket, but at the end of the day, the two are critical components to governance today. That's why Enterprise Vault 6.0 from Veritas, which is now a part of Symantec, is taking archiving to the next level.

Enterprise Vault 6.0 lets organizations archive and manage e-mail (both Exchange and Lotus Notes), instant messages, Microsoft SharePoint documents and files based on Microsoft Windows and Network Appliance file system. In short, Veritas says Enterprise Vault 6.0 provides a tamper-proof repository of business records, allowing enterprises to comply with records-retention regulations.

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