Workflow engine interoperability has been perceived as being critical to the success of the Coalition and to the future of the workflow sector of the industry because it removes the potential for workflow engines to create islands of automation within organizations. For vendors it removes barriers to selling their products into organizations that may already have deployed other workflow or workflow enabled products. For purchasers and systems integrators it reduces the risks they take in making buying decisions and allows them to mix and match products from different vendors that collectively meet business needs, in particular when deploying enterprise-wide workflow.
The Workflow Management Coalition has now announced the release of the initial version of the Interoperability Specification consisting of an Abstract Interoperability Specification defining the theory of workflow engine interoperability as defined by the Workflow Management Coalition and a binding specification for its implementation over Internet e-mail using MIME protocols. Other bindings are expected to emerge over time.
In recent months, the Coalition has validated the use of the specification in numerous live demonstrations of a workflow engine interoperability supported by the following WfMC members: Computron, CSE Systems, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, ICL, Microsoft, Staffware, and Wang. In addition to the above, the following companies have declared their support for these standards: Action Technologies, Business Review International, DOMUS Software, Faba, FileNet Corporation, Franhofer Institut fur Arbeitwirtschaft und Organisation, Fujitsu Software Corporation, Hitachi Ltd., IA Corporation, IDS Prof. Scheer GmbH, InConcert Inc., Meta Software MS S.A., Open Text Corporation, PPP Healthcare, SAP AG, Sema Group Sae, and Siemens Nixdorf Informationssysteme. The Coalition anticipates that additional WfMC member companies will join in support of the specification soon.
"We are extremely pleased about the public release of the Workflow Interoperability specification because it will ultimately increase the value and decrease the risks for customers implementing workflow solutions," said Sunil Sarin, Chairman of the Coalition's Working Group on Workflow Interoperability and Workflow Architect at InConcert Inc., a Coalition member.
Consisting of more than 180 members in 25 countries, the Coalition has quickly become established as the primary standards body for this rapidly expanding software market. In November 1995, the Coalition published its workflow application programming interface (Interface 2) specification designed to give users increased flexibility in implementing standards-based workflow systems.
Workflow Management Coalition Office
Avenue Marcel Thiry 204, 1200 Brussels,Belgium;
Tel: +32 2 774 96 33. Fax: +32 2 774 96 90
E-Mail: 100113.1555@compuserve.com
Or contact one of the Country Contacts
Last updated: Wed Nov 13 10:26:19 1996 by Austin Tate, AIAI (A.Tate@ed.ac.uk)