BPMS goes SaaS - Intalio On Demand

www.intalio.com The big story in SaaS is going to be when users can configure and deploy their own end to end business processes, leveraging other SaaS services as required. That step came a lot closer with the announcement of Intalio On Demand below. The best BPMS is now available as an On Demand solution. Even it this only achieves a demonstration of what is possible - the significance is huge. What used to be multi-million dollar "big iron" IT, is now available at a fraction of the cost, and, in a form that can be provisioned in minutes. While I am not naive enough to believe this approach will be adopted quickly, it is a harbinger of change to come. It, along side the announcements of the force.com platform from Salesforce.com, are, in my view, two significant indicators that the way business systems will be built and operated in the future. This is bringing distributed transaction management to the Web cloud at scale.

* Press Release

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Mar. 29, 2008 — Intalio, Inc., the leading Open Source BPMS company, today announced Intalio|On Demand, the first open source Business Process Management System delivered as a service. Intalio|On Demand is available by signing up at www.intalio.com/on-demand. The subscription for the service starts at $1,500 for each dedicated server, and includes bandwidth, licenses, maintenance, and support. Users can receive a free 5-day evaluation.

The convenience of being able to instantly deploy a BPM project lowers the bar for adoption. Business users and IT analysts can get a project up and running much quicker and without the administrative concerns associated with managing the required servers. Intalio|On Demand essentially replicates the Intalio|BPMS On Premise version and includes the connectors for Salesforce.com as well as enterprise applications such as Oracle E-Business Suite and SAP.

"Intalio|On Demand BPM is a fully functional, scalable, secure, and flexible enterprise ready BPM solution which will revolutionize BPM adaptability across not only large but also small and medium business spectrum," stated Srikanth Kollu, Global Practice Head – BPM/SOA at JASS & Associates Inc. “After building some prototypes with Intalio|On Demand I was convinced that this approach was the best. We have decided to go with Intalio.” JASS & Associates develops and implements end-to-end IT solutions for clients, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, from diverse industry segments.

Running dedicated servers on top of Amazon Web Services (AWS) ensures that Intalio|On Demand retains the highest level of security, reliability and availability possible. "The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud is a perfect fit for porting on-premise software to a ‘software as a service’ model", says Senior Amazon Web Services Evangelist, Jeff Barr. "Amazon EC2 allows companies like Intalio to develop new distribution channels with minimal expenditure."

Using rPath as the software appliance on top of AWS increases application scalability to ensure that there is always capacity for whatever user demand is generated. Intalio|BPMS, in both On Demand and On Premise versions, supports over 100,000 different process models deployed on a single server, with over 100 million process instances running concurrently. A single server can also accommodate thousands of concurrent users. This means that Intalio|BPMS has more than two orders of magnitude greater capacity than any other BPM solution available today.

According to Forrester analyst Ray Wang in the August 2007 report titled Competition Intensifies For The SMB ERP Customer, “SaaS deployment options finally put business users in the driver's seat in software decision-making. With rapid deployment of a solution, enterprises can realize benefits in days, not weeks. Additionally, software pricing by cost/user/month enables business users to consider licenses as an operation expense instead of a capital expense. No longer do business users have to seek board approval for capital expenses or assess IT capacity. However, Forrester recommends that business units and IT teams coordinate on issues such as integration requirements, process flows, and long-term support.”

Force.com - Is this the BIGGEST announcement in SaaS to date?

Quote "Finally, Focus on Innovation, Not Infrastructure - Force.com is the world’s first Platform as a Service (PaaS), enabling developers to create and deliver any kind of business application, entirely on-demand and without software. It’s a breakthrough new concept that is making companies radically more successful by letting them translate their ideas into deployed applications in record time."

Salesforce.com have done it again! From CRM, to AppExchange, and now Force.com. An entire, Internet standards based open environment for development (IDE) and application server (AS) working at Internet scale. Simply amazing. Every company will want one. Believe.

Strong recommendation to read all about it. http://www.force.com