Metastorm Acquires Proforma to Bolster Process Modeling and Optimization

Business process management (BPM) vendor Metastorm has acquired Proforma Corp., a well-known modeling vendor offering business process analysis (BPA) and enterprise architecture (EA) suites. The combination fills gaps in Metastorm's BPM suite and, with the addition of Proforma's EA tools, broadens the vendor's footprint in the IT realm.

Proforma has approximately 1,300 customers, 120 employees and $20 million in annual revenue. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but it doubles Metastorm's customer base to 2,600 and puts it on track for $70 million in revenue this year, making it the third-largest pure-play BPM vendor after Pegasystems and Global 360. It also improves the company's cost structure, as Metastorm previously sourced its process modeling components from IGrafx. "I think it's a good move for Metastorm," says analyst Colin Teubner of Forrester. "They won't have to share revenue with IGrafx and the tool sets are quite complementary. Metastorm hadn't done a lot of work on process analysis, so Proforma rounds out their suite, assuming they do a good job of integrating everything."

Proforma's ProVisionEA tools are used by architects to effect business strategy and operational objectives by modeling enterprise assets, future states and required changes. The ProVisionBPA suite is used to document, analyze and streamline processes with the aid of modeling, simulation, Six Sigma and other optimization methods.

Integrations with the BPM suite notwithstanding, Metastorm says it will continue to sell and support stand-alone modeling products. "The majority of Proforma's customers have pure modeling deployments and they have not made the connection to [BPM] execution environments," says Laura Mooney, Metastorm's Senior Director of Corporate & Product Marketing. "Many of them do want to make that connection… but we do intend to continue to play in the stand-alone BPA and EA markets."

Proforma's competitors in the BPA and EA markets include IDS-Scheer, iGrafx, Mega, Casewise and Telelogic. IDS-Scheer has OEM relationships with both SAP and Oracle while Telelogic was recently acquired by IBM. Proforma had an OEM relationship with Oracle predating the IDS-Scheer deal forged last year.

Metastorm says it will retain Proforma's office in the Detroit area as well as all software development, professional services and sales employees. Jerry Huchzermeier, Proforma's co-founder and CTO, will join Metastorm's executive team.