09.28.2010 – DALLAS:
Motive Systems, the developer of M-Files easy document management software, has launched M-Files 7.0. This latest version of M-Files focuses on maximizing the efficiency of daily operations through enhancements to email and workflow management, improved search capabilities for instantly locating documents, and numerous user interface improvements. In addition to new features specifically associated with Microsoft Office, M-Files 7.0 user interface and search enhancements make it even easier to manage important business information such as documents, customers, and projects, while also ensuring that the right information can be found quickly when it is needed. Further, with the volume of documents rapidly increasing in many companies, M-Files 7.0 adds support for large document vaults that contain millions of documents. M-Files 7.0 also provides the foundation for the recently announced M-Files Cloud Vault, a hosted version of M-Files available for a low monthly fee that does not require purchasing or configuring a server.

“We are very excited about M-Files 7.0, especially the enhancements to workflows and the display of objects and their relationships,” said Stephane Mellier, general manager of StreamDesign, an M-Files partner and solution provider. “After working with M-Files 7.0 for some time, we estimate that the new features and enhancements will deliver an increase in productivity of at least 20 percent in daily data and document management activities.”

Get Control of Overflowing Email Inboxes
Email is the primary means by which most companies communicate and process information, but the huge volume of email means that managing and tracking it has become a major drain on productivity. M-Files 7.0 builds on its existing integration with Microsoft Outlook to dramatically improve the way businesses manage email. M-Files 7.0 adds “M-Files aware” folders and support for standard Outlook rules for automatic email processing. When an email is moved to one of these folders (either manually, by dragging and dropping, or automatically, via an Outlook rule), it is automatically stored in the M-Files vault and classified with user-defined tags. This direct connection to the corporate document vault via Outlook folders requires no special technical skill and enables automated archival and workflow processing based on who sent the email, who it was sent to, or what it is about.

When emails are stored in the vault, in addition to tagging them with user-defined properties, or metadata, all threads are maintained, along with relationships to companies or customers, and contacts. This allows an email to be quickly and easily located and sorted based on the customer or contacts to which it is related, or by any property, such as the subject, the date received or sent, the project to which it is related, and so on. Further, M-Files eliminates duplicates by checking to determine if an identical email has already been saved.

“M-Files 7.0 makes major strides on numerous fronts, continuing our relentless drive to make professional document management accessible to any business, no matter how small or budget-constrained,” said Greg Milliken, president of Motive Systems Inc. “While M-Files is a feature-rich solution that can meet the needs of even very large enterprises, ease of use is our primary goal. When we add new functionality we will only add it if it can be implemented in a fashion that is easily accessible to any Windows user. The email management features of M-Files 7.0 are a great example of this: to save emails to the vault you just drag and drop them right into an Outlook folder, or set up a standard Outlook rule to automatically move it to the appropriate folder. These are standard features with which Outlook users are already familiar, so there is nothing new to learn. In other words, if you know Windows, you know M-Files.”

Other New Features in M-Files 7.0
• New grouping options within search results that speed up the location of documents and other objects.
• Predefined search criteria, such as searching only for documents or customers.
• Improved workflow assignments and shortcuts for changing workflow states.
• Save to the vault as a PDF without opening the document in an application.
• Improved handling of larger document vaults that include millions of documents.
• Support for six new languages, including Arabic, Croatian, Italian, Russian, Simplified Chinese, and Spanish, bringing the total number of languages supported by M-Files to 21.

Why Easy Document Management Makes Sense for Any Company
Most companies store documents in cluttered network folders, or deal with the problem of important documents scattered across individual PCs. Professionals spend up to 50 percent of their time looking for the right information(1), including unproductive tasks such as searching for documents and emails, interrupting colleagues to locate information that should be available instantly, determining if a document is the latest version, or worse, needlessly duplicating work already completed by a colleague. Each day, when opening or saving a file from applications like Acrobat, Excel, PowerPoint, Word and QuickBooks, millions of office workers are wondering: “Where is the file I need?” “What was it named?” or “Is this the latest version?” This is a huge drag on productivity, especially if one factors in those times when a document simply cannot be found and must be recreated, or when work progresses using the wrong version of a document.

M-Files is a Must-Have Addition to Any Windows Workgroup
M-Files is a powerful document management system that enables companies and organizations of all sizes in a variety of industries to make dramatic gains in efficiency and productivity by improving the way they organize and manage their business documents and processes – without requiring them to change the way they work. M-Files eliminates traditional Windows folders; instead, users open from, and save to, the M-Files Vault. Documents are simply classified as a common type, such as an invoice, proposal, email, contract, etc., and a descriptive tag or two is added – that’s it. Finding a file is as simple as typing in a tag or performing a full-text search right from the Open or Save dialog box of any Windows application. This is possible due to M-Files’ unique “Virtual-Local” drive technology that allows the vault to appear as a local hard drive (the M: drive), in any standard Windows Explorer dialog box, whether online or offline. For companies that would rather not set up their own central server, a hosted version called M-Files Cloud Vault is also available, providing all the benefits of M-Files for a low monthly fee.

www.m-files.com

Download document: Next Generation of Knowledge Worker

Release 6.1 of Metastorm ProVision and Metastorm Knowledge Exchange introduces a range of enhancements to better support large Enterprise Architecture programs, provide extended reporting and analysis, and enhance interoperability with other software applications. These enhancements include:

• Enhanced reporting and analysis
• User interface enhancements that allow users to focus on a targeted portion of the enterprise
• A bi-directional XPDL Interface
• A new Rational software interface
• Improved management of custom properties
• Intelligent check-in
• Scalability enhancements that improve performance for larger repositories

Metastorm ProVision

Reporting and Analysis
We are pleased to announce Release 6.1 of Metastorm ProVision and Metastorm Knowledge Exchange is now available. Copies of this release may be downloaded from the Partner Zone. Release 6.1 is scheduled for general availability on March 31, 2008. This announcement provides a summary of the new features found in Release 6.1.

Release 6.1 of Metastorm ProVision and Metastorm Knowledge Exchange introduces a range of enhancements to better support large Enterprise Architecture programs, provide extended reporting and analysis, and enhance interoperability with other software applications. These enhancements include:

• Enhanced reporting and analysis
• User interface enhancements that allow users to focus on a targeted portion of the enterprise
• A bi-directional XPDL Interface
• A new Rational software interface
• Improved management of custom properties
• Intelligent check-in
• Scalability enhancements that improve performance for larger repositories

Metastorm ProVision

Reporting and Analysis
Release 6.1 provides reporting and analysis capability in the areas of Portfolio Management and Six Sigma. These reports produce information in a format other than Metastorm ProVision’s interpreters and provide alternate methods for analyzing the content of project notebooks. There are a number of Portfolio Management reports available on the Metastorm ProVision Customer Support website for current users to download covering Project Portfolio, System Portfolio and Technology Portfolio management. There will also be reports for those engaged in Six Sigma/Lean Sigma projects.

Metastorm has made available a number of pre-written analysis macros for the Minitab and JMP software products that analyze the discrete-event simulation results from Metastorm ProVision. These macros can be run against the log files produced by the Discrete-Event Simulator to analyze each event that occurred during a simulation run. These statistical analyses can pinpoint the time and conditions that occurred during a simulation run where a process bottlenecked or excessive costs were incurred, for example. The macros are available for download from the Metastorm ProVision Customer Support website and may be used as is or modified to suit your specific statistical analysis requirements.

Enhanced Object Selection
Metastorm ProVision 6.1 extends the ability to select the object instances that appear in association and property grids through the addition of filters. Filters allow the user to focus on a subset of object instances in a notebook for reference or modification. A filter can specify a range of instances to be selected, or select objects by specifying a key word contained in an object’s name or other property. As objects that satisfy the filtering criteria are added to the notebook, the grids will be dynamically updated to include them.

XPDL Interface
Metastorm ProVision 6.1 contains new interface capabilities with the WfMC XPDL process definition interchange standard. This feature provides the ability to both export and import XPDL process definitions. These interfaces are performed using the CIF (Common Interchange Format) facility in Metastorm ProVision. During export, the CIF XML is transformed into XPDL 2.0 which may be read by software adhering to that standard. The import mechanism can translate either XPDL 2.0 or 1.0 file formats into CIF for importing into Metastorm ProVision. Both workflow models and business class models are exchanged using the XPDL interfaces.

Rational Software Interface using XMI 2.1
Metastorm ProVision 6.1 contains enhanced interface capabilities with the Rational software products. These interfaces provide both an export to and an import from Rational Software Architect (RSA) and Rational Software Modeler (RSM). The export interface generates XMI 2.1 that can be imported by RSA/RSM or any other software tool that conforms to this standard. The Rational software product will then contain models and objects sourced from Metastorm ProVision.

The import interface works in the reverse of the export approach. Selected models in the Rational software are first exported to the XMI 2.1, Rational EMX or Rational RAS Asset format. Any of these file formats are transformed using the XMI 2.1 import facility to produce CIF data readable by Metastorm ProVision.

Metastorm BPM Release 7.6 Simulation
Enhancements have been made to the CIF interface that enables the introduction of a simulation Wizard to Metastorm BPM Release 7.6. This allows a process model built in the Metastorm BPM Designer to be generated in Metastorm ProVision so that simulations can be performed. Users may decide to manually input simulation data or to sample historical data collected by the Metastorm BPM Process Engine and base simulations upon that historical data. For human-centric processes, actual activity execution data can be collected using Metastorm Discovery and directly imported into ProVision. Running simulations of process models reduces the risk when making changes to these models and facilitates ongoing process improvement.

These new interoperability capabilities demonstrate Metastorm’s commitment to continue to support and enhance CIF interoperability. CIF is Metastorm’s approach to maintaining an open interface to standards and other third party software packages.

Metastorm Knowledge Exchange

Dynamic Inventory Structure
To aid the user in accessing specific objects in inventory more quickly, Metastorm Knowledge Exchange’s thin client now provides a dynamic inventory structure. This capability breaks large inventory lists into segmented lists, and provides grouped subsets of objects in the inventory tree. For example, if the inventory contains hundreds or thousands of instances of a certain object type, an intermediate level is inserted into the tree structure to provide equally sized sub-groups. Each sub-group displays the name of the first and last object in its group name. The size of these groups can be set with a user-controlled preference.

Custom Property Administration
Version 6.1 improves the control that an organization has over custom properties. Custom property management is now an administrative function of Metastorm Knowledge Exchange. An additional user permission has been provided in the administration area to permit the introduction and modification of custom properties. The consistency of custom property definitions between Metastorm Knowledge Exchange and Metastorm ProVision are also monitored. Changes to custom property definitions during check-out and check-in will be identified and controlled appropriately.

Intelligent Check-In
Metastorm Knowledge Exchange has extensively modified its check-in tactics. An intelligent algorithm has been implemented that determines the intent of the user and replicates those actions on the server. For example, when an activity is placed into a workflow model lane, Metastorm Knowledge Exchange ensures all models affected by the change are updated.

Improved Memory Management
A number of enhancements have been made to improve scalability by better managing the memory resources in Metastorm Knowledge Exchange. The enhanced memory management strategy includes improved coordination with the Java Virtual Machine to free up resources when needed which provides the ability to handle a higher volume of work. The most significant improvements are in the areas of custom properties and model layout information.

Data Schema – taking advantage of the DBMS
Metastorm Knowledge Exchange has redesigned its underlying data architecture to more effectively utilize the technology upon which it is implemented. This allows Metastorm Knowledge Exchange to take advantage of built-in database functionality which results in improved performance when, for example, generating model and object inventories.

The improved memory management and redesigned data architecture have given preliminary results of a 50% reduction in check-in and check-out durations.

Product Information

Downloading Release 6.1
Customers with current maintenance contracts and the appropriate licenses may download the software from the Metastorm ProVision Customer Support Center as follows:

• Metastorm ProVision 6.1 is available on the Product Downloads webpage.
• Metastorm Knowledge Exchange 6.1 is available on the Knowledge Exchange Downloads webpage.
• The reports and statistical analysis macros are available on the Reports and Analysis Downloads webpage.

Documentation
A complete set of documentation for each product is provided with the product’s installation.

Compatibility
Release 6.1 of Metastorm Knowledge Exchange is only supported with release 6.1 of Metastorm ProVision. Users of prior versions of Metastorm ProVision will need to upgrade if they wish to take advantage of Metastorm Knowledge Exchange 6.1.

Migration
Repositories maintained in a prior version must go through a schema conversion for use in release 6.1. Both Metastorm ProVision and Metastorm Knowledge Exchange contain an automatic conversion utility that will be initiated when repositories from a prior version are opened. Users will then have the option to retain a back up repository before the conversion is performed.

Local Language Versions
The initial release of Metastorm ProVision 6.1 will be in English. The French and Japanese language versions are scheduled for April, 2008. The Spanish language version is expected to be available in mid-May. Release 6.1 is also the initial release of Metastorm ProVision in the German language. This release is scheduled for June, 2008.

Built on the foundation of the VRM developed by the Value Chain Group, Inc. (VCG) — an independent, not-for-profit, global organization — the Metastorm VRM provides capabilities to improve business operations required for the design, manufacture, delivery, and support of products through the integration of critical business operations in a single framework. Additionally, it accelerates business improvements with a validated reference set of measurements, processes and practices.

“The Value Chain Group’s mission is to support businesses who seek to strategically optimize in the areas of agility, innovation and time to react to changing conditions in a global environment, and we are pleased to partner with an organization like Metastorm that has proven its dedication to helping customers achieve those same important goals,” said Scott Palmer, Executive Director, Value Chain Group. “Metastorm takes the VRM a step forward by providing a dynamic, ready-to-implement and user-friendly solution that gives organizations a jump start in establishing a world-class value chain.”

Through the use of a set of standard business models that delivers an end-to-end view of value chain management processes, the Metastorm VRM serves as a powerful resource for value chain process owners in developing an accurate model of the business activities and information required to provide better service to customers and improve the efficiency of interactions with suppliers and partners.

The combination of the Metastorm VRM and the Metastorm ProVision modeling tool enables organizations to efficiently configure and define the scope of a value chain – and then analyze the process start to finish. It represents:

An enterprise-level business framework for today’s value chain processes, based upon the VCG framework
An end-to-end business model that is focused on process types including Plan, Govern and Execute, as well as a common set of definitions.
Over 1,000 process-specific metrics aligned with performance attributes for process measurement and benchmarking
More than 400 best practices that facilitate delivering best in class supply chain performance
Other reference models in Metastorm’s portfolio include those for supply chain (SCOR), customer chain (CCOR), design chain (DCOR), finance (including Sarbanes-Oxley compliance), Information Technology Infrastructure Management (ITIM, based on ITIL?), and the telecom industry (based on eTOM?). Metastorm built the reference models to be integrated within a common taxonomy, so they can be tied together to provide a comprehensive organizational view.

“Metastorm is proud to team with the Value Chain Group and expand our line-up of reference models to include the VRM. It is a testament to our continued commitment to supporting open standards,” said Greg Carter, vice president of development and CTO of Metastorm. “By bringing together published standards with Metastorm’s industry expertise, our reference models offer organizations a path to defining and optimizing operations of their key business functions.”

Background
For this report, Forrester conducted lab-based evaluations of eight leading human-centric business process management (BPM) suite vendors across 150 criteria, (Ascentn, Bluespring Software, K2, Global 360, Metastorm, Singularity, Ultimus, and W4).

Key Position Points
The following are the key points from the report.

• Process360 is positioned in the upper-right-hand corner as the number one Microsoft-based BPM suite of those evaluated
• Process360’s product functionality rates superior to all others evaluated
• Global 360’s process Intelligence strategy is highlighted as primary differentiator, positioning Global 360 to take advantage as companies gain BPM maturity
• Process360 was lauded for the following capabilities:
• Process Intelligence (process-centric BI) capabilities
• SharePoint integration
• Support for content-centric processes
• Process360 is ideal for all but the most system-intensive business processes
• Global 360’s strategy was rated higher than any Microsoft- or Java-based BPMS vendor

Notable Quotes
Below are some of the key quotes from the report that you’ll be hearing more about from us shortly.

• “Global 360 is a clear all-around Leader in human-centric BPM technology.”
• “The product is an especially good fit for buyers that…want serious process management support.”
• “…a comprehensive BPM suite that will support all but the most system-intensive process needs.”
• “Global 360 also has built perhaps the most impressive integration to SharePoint…”
• “The product has an architecture with better Java API support than others…”
• “Few other BPM vendors, if any, provide this level of runtime analytics.”

The Ventana Research Performance Management Vendor and Product Scorecard is a tool that organizations can use to improve their understanding of how well different software and solutions may meet their business and IT requirements for Performance Management. This unbiased and objective research is the first industry report to assess software designed specifically for enabling Performance Management.

The Ventana Research Scorecard rates each vendor’s and product’s compliance to the Ventana Research PerformanceCycle™ methodology. Based on the research and assessment methodology, we ranked the vendors to determine the best fit for enabling Performance Management. The results can be used to examine existing portfolios and evaluate new investments.

Summary of Benchmark Results for Infor

Overall: Infor Top-Ranked at 97%
In the 2007 Performance Management Scorecard, Ventana Research reviewed the Infor Performance Management MPC CPM Bundle 7.2, an integrated application suite consisting of modules for budgeting, planning, forecasting, financial consolidation, strategy management, reporting and analysis and production reporting. The software suite was analyzed and assessed and the overall compliance was calculated by aggregating the score across the PerformanceCycle™ methodology and dividing by the total potential score. Infor received the top overall ranking of 97%.

Align: Infor Second-Ranked at 97%
This step makes sure that actions and plans are directly related to reaching the goals, objectives and initiatives set out by executives and management. It enables you to align the workforce to performance goals and ensure they define, communicate and coordinate targets, score performance, and provide appropriate rewards and incentives. Included in the 2007 Scorecard are capabilities for initiatives, portfolios and competency profiles. This step includes defining targets and rewards while setting up automated notifications of the scores to the workforce. Infor Performance Management MPC CPM Bundle 7.2 had an overall 97% compliance to the supporting functional capabilities in the Align step.

Optimize: Infor Top-Ranked at 96%
This step prepares for future actions and decisions to define the goals, objectives and initiatives as set out in the Align step. It enables an organization to determine through planning and collaborating how the workforce and operations can improve their value to the organization. This step includes projecting potential through forecasting and planning, collaborating on actions and integrating recommended actions to improve performance. Infor Performance Management MPC CPM Bundle 7.2 had an overall 96% compliance to the supporting functional capabilities in the Optimize step.

Understand: Infor Top-Ranked at 98%
This step reviews the historical performance of people and processes. It enables you to understand how results impact the organization. This step enables management to access information and analysts to iterate through modeling, discovery and interactions on the information, the measurement of performance and ongoing monitoring. Infor Performance Management MPC CPM Bundle 7.2 had an overall 98% compliance to the supporting functional capabilities in the Understand step.

Research and Assessment Methodology

Performance Management is the methodology and process of managing organizational performance and associated business processes according to a commonly understood set of goals and objectives. Performance Management focuses on enabling individuals to act efficiently and make effective decisions across the organization or a business process. This approach guides all individuals to fulfill their potential and interoperate across strategic, tactical and operational levels.

Ventana Research believes that an objective review of specific vendors and products is critical to the methodology that enables Performance Management. Your review should include a thorough analysis of what’s possible and what’s relevant. Our research will help you understand how vendors and products fit into a Performance Management framework. Rather than try to assess every detail of every product, we researched characteristics and features that relate to the three steps of Performance Management: Align, Optimize and Understand.

We have made every effort to explore the supporting functional requirements and capabilfor PerformanceCycle™. Even so, there may be anderstand how vendors and products fit intothresearch in your own proper context is critical to ensure that products deliver the highest level of compliance and quality for supporting your projects in Performance Management.

About Ventana Research

Ventana Research is the leading Performance Management research afirm. By providing expert insight and detailed odelivered through a top-down approach that connects people, process, information and technology. What makes Ventana Research different from other analyst firms is a focus oPerformance Management for finance, operations and IT. This focus, plus research as a foundation and reach into a community of over two million corporate executives throughextensive media partnerships, allows Ventana Research to deliver a high-value, low-risk method for achieving optimal business performance. To learn how Ventana Research caassess and benchmark your people, processes and technology for Performance Management success, please visit us at www.ventanaresearch.com

TIBCO has been revolutionizing information architectures (to be real-time and event driven) with solutions for Service Oriented Architecture, Business Process Management, and Business Optimization; and Spotfire’s next generation Business Intelligence solutions are transforming the way business users interact with data. In a global information economy the winners are those who create a sustainable and systemic Information Advantage.

TIBCO to Acquire Spotfire

• Acquisition Announcement
• Overview Presentation
• Acquisition FAQ

This is easier said than done when new data is expanding by 30% each year, when existing data is trapped in various proprietary information architectures that are unresponsive to real-time business challenges, or while the data people really use to make business decisions is floating freely in unmanaged “spread marts.”

Data management technologies and application and data interface standards like SOA are making data increasingly available to business users but the environment remains technically diverse, unresponsive, and often disconnected or irrelevant to professionals whose work requires fast access to dynamic information from disparate sources specifically optimized for their jobs. For these reasons, industry analysts have identified the nascent convergence of business intelligence with business processes. Some call it “pervasive BI” (Gartner) or “process-centric BI (Forrester).” Others call it “intelligent process automation” (IDC). In all cases the point of this emerging disruptive convergence is to make the information that is relevant to any specific business process – whether a stock analysis and trade; an evaluation of adverse effects in a clinical trial; or the way a sales person plans their calls for the day – available in the right context and in real time equipping every business person to quickly discover new insights and make better decisions.

Until today, no one has delivered the complete real time, business user relevant infrastructure that organizations need to establish a systemic sustainable Information Advantage. The large IT vendors are overly invested in the status quo – traditional BI architectures and dashboards, proprietary application stacks, transactional process management. Today, only TIBCO is able to implement the componentized, real time data delivery infrastructure, business process management and now, adaptable enterprise analytics that will set winners in the global information economy apart from losers.

The link for the report is http://www.proformacorp.com/Downloads/files/ForresterWaveQ3.pdf