IDS Scheer Launches New Products From The ARIS Platform For Process Excellence

Web-based BPM Solutions For Enterprise Architecture, Business Rules And SOA.

IDS Scheer, international solution provider for processes and IT, launched its latest ARIS Platform release. Customers can now benefit from the new web-based products ARIS IT Architect, ARIS Business Rules Designer, ARIS SOA Designer and ARIS BI Modeler.

“With the new version of the ARIS Platform we support our customers especially in the fields where the use of modern technologies is business-critical,” said Dr. Wolfram Jost, member of the executive board, responsible for IDS Scheer product strategy and development. “ARIS Platform offers innovative solutions for SOA, Enterprise Architecture and business rules.”

IDS Scheer's ARIS 7.02 release features ARIS IT Architect for Enterprise Architecture Management. This purpose-built product boasts design and analysis capabilities. The new methods and analysis processes included in the product can be used to establish and evaluate IT landscapes. Enterprise Architecture Management creates transparency within IT development plans and architectural modules.

Mapping framework-specific methods such as Zachman, TEAF, TOGAF, and IT City Planning, storing them centrally in the ARIS database and linking them with the supporting business processes enables companies to gain a full overview of the entire organizational structure – with the added benefit of the cost savings that are generated through increased transparency and a simplified IT landscape. Publishing component ARIS Business Publisher facilitates the flow of information throughout the company and also takes care of information management. The end result? All the necessary information is made available in corporate portals within a short space of time.

ARIS SOA Designer is another new product. Service orientation provides new and above all more flexible options for providing technical IT support for operational processes. With the ARIS SOA Designer Service Browser, services for automating operational activities are easily identifiable. The combination of the service description and the operational activity to be automated in the process model enables executable BPEL processes to be automatically generated.

After the BPEL processes have been exported, they can be executed in platforms such as SAP XI, Oracle SOA Suite, IBM WebSphere, Fujitsu Interstage, and BEA WebLogic. By merging the operational and technical SOA levels in ARIS, reciprocal dependencies become transparent and can be controlled. The services will increasingly be reused, which in turn will lead to discernable savings.

IDS Scheer and its partner Corticon have launched ARIS Business Rules Designer. This new product is a comprehensive integration solution for business process management and business rules modeling, and is the first of its kind in the industry. The software is based on Corticon's business rules products, and enables customers to model, manage, measure, and implement business rules. While business processes describe the operational procedures within a company, business rules explain the decisions behind these processes. By integrating the rules into ARIS Business Rules Designer, IDS Scheer customers will be able to model, measure and manage the business-driven decisions within their processes. Users can now model decisions as tasks within the process, which are then automatically generated into executable services. The software is already in use at US company ELM Resources.

ELM is modernizing its entire architecture. Therefore, it used IDS Scheer’s ARIS platform to model its entire process and found that decisions, and their associated business rules, were the most critical piece. ELM views this as an opportunity to assemble all the business rules into a modular, service-oriented system that would provide easy access, enable rapid change, and cut significant costs out of their loan processing efforts. For this ELM turned to Business Rules Management technology. “ELM Resources is about rules – that’s who we are,” said Pierre Vedel, SVP and CIO for ELM Resources. “We take information from our customers and partners, apply business rules and make loans happen. You could say that we are 100% rules-driven.”

ARIS BI Modeler is a new product that for the first time automatically processes graphical representations of available metadata via an interface to SAP BI. The product also allows subsequent redocumentation of the architecture and the data processing concept of all implemented SAP BI systems. ARIS BI Modeler offers customers the capability to produce detailed plans and analyses of data structures and data transformation within an SAP BI system. In turn, this lays the foundation for migration to new SAP BI systems and for consolidating and/or harmonizing existing SAP BI landscapes.