"Traditional BPM often focuses on automating what can be automated, but struggles to address the more dynamic process challenges that require deeper context and collaborative work between process participants," said Mark Carges (pictured), executive vice president at BEA, as BEA has introduced a new integrated solution that designed to transcend the boundaries of traditional business process management (BPM) by supporting more contextual and collaborative process needs:  AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition.

 "This type of business process is difficult to address with a single system and is best supported by the combination of BPM, collaboration technology and a rich interactive portal framework," Carges added.

AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition combines three BEA products for portals, collaboration and BPM into a single, integrated offering, Carges explained. It is designed, he said, "to be the first integrated solution to unite three of the most valuable enterprise assets: people, process and knowledge."

According to BEA, AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition delivers the following:

• Powers the complete business process lifecycle AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition includes the market-leading AquaLogic BPM Suite with integrated modeling, execution and measurement of business processes.
• Process-enabled, enterprise knowledge AquaLogic Interaction's Knowledge Directory is designed to provide seamless, structured access to information across unstructured and structured enterprise source systems, including Documentum, Microsoft SharePoint, FileNet, Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Windows and Novell File Systems and more. Links to items from these systems can be attached to business processes in support of the individual activities within the process. 
• Collaboration at every level, for every step The new offering also includes the full capabilities of AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration directly integrated within business processes. This is designed to enable automatic system events or people to set up collaborative spaces tied to business processes that support and capture the ad-hoc, unstructured work associated with process activities.
• A uniform, personal user experience Business users can access all these features through AquaLogic Interaction's AJAX-based portal front-end with single sign-on and integrated corporate identity management. The portal is designed to support easy, comprehensive personalization to deliver work environments tailored to each role in the enterprise.

AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition is made possible by ALBPM WorkSpace Extensions, a new feature of the AquaLogic BPM Suite. AquaLogic BPM WorkSpace Extensions is designed to provide integration between the products in the AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition. They can also deliver the foundation for integrating BPM with additional portal products such as BEA WebLogic Portal or IBM WebSphere Portal.

"By linking business process management with collaboration, we can enhance our business performance and agility. The new BEA AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition can help extend our company's sales application in the portal by mapping sales process activities with best-practice approaches," said Mishael Reese, E-Relationship manager at The Babcock & Wilcox Company. "By streamlining our sales process, it can help us ensure consistency among the sales organization, which can result in increased efficiencies, reduction of costs and decreased development time."

BEA is offering AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition with a promotional discount on the entire suite or any individual components through May 31, 2007. For more information, please visit http://bea.com/bpmce.