SELF IMPROVEMENT

IBM Tailors BPM for Small  Business
This [software] addresses the BPM need in the mid-market," said Ron Kline, an IBM director for marketing to small and midsized businesses. The software is based on the recently revamped enterprise BPM software IBM launched earlier this month, called Business Process Manager.
The standard edition of Business Process Manager combined two of IBM's previous BPM offerings, the WebSphere Process Server and IBM WebSphere Lombardi Edition. BPM software is designed to automate routine business processes, such as hiring help or tracking shipments.
The new software is "departmentally oriented," Kline said. "You wouldn't use this software like a large enterprise would to track multiple processes across your entire business process."
Instead, this software could accommodate a handful of processes. The standard edition has no user limit and can be clustered across multiple servers.
Express is different from IBM's Blueworks Live, another lightweight IBM BPM offering, in that its processes can be coupled with back-office systems, such as CRM (customer relationship management) software.
An average deployment for about 200 users would cost around $25,000, Kline said.