Metastorm Acquires Proforma Corporation, Aligns Market Leaders and Disciplines

Killer Combination of EA, BPA, and BPM ClosesStrategy-Execution Gap to Accelerate Value Creation BALTIMORE and LONDON, Aug. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Metastorm, a leadingprovider of Business Process Management (BPM) software for organizationalagility, innovation, and governance, today announced the acquisition ofProforma Corporation, the leading provider of enterprise modeling solutionsfor Enterprise Architecture (EA) and Business Process Analysis (BPA). Thecombined company will deliver an integrated enterprise software platformthat unifies business strategy and architecture, process analysis andoptimization, and managed human- and system-centric process execution.Metastorm will address the complete spectrum of activities required toachieve enterprise alignment, optimize execution across the businessprocess value chain and help organizations gain a sustainable strategicadvantage through true enterprise visibility and continuous improvement. "Metastorm is proud to be joining forces with Proforma to move beyondtoday's Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) definition and chart a newcourse for enterprise effectiveness through increased collaboration,agility, and understanding. Organizations today are striving to improveperformance through EA, BPA and BPM initiatives. The synergies,interdependencies, and potential value of these three disciplines areimmense, and now is the right time for Proforma and Metastorm to joinforces and deliver an integrated software platform," stated Bob Farrell,president and CEO of Metastorm. "Metastorm has always focused on deliveringinnovative solutions that allow organizations to achieve strategic andcompetitive advantage across key business activities and processes. Withthe convergence of these disciplines, Metastorm sets the stage for the nextgeneration enterprise software platform." Metastorm Enterprise(TM) -- the new software platform -- allowscustomers to establish a unified enterprise model which can be leveraged toinspire collaboration, guide improvement and innovation, and enable thealignment of strategy, analysis and execution for optimal businessperformance throughout the enterprise. The result is never before achievedvisibility into the impact of decisions at all levels, the opportunitiesavailable to the organization as a whole, and the ability to accelerate theexecution of decisions and actions with less risk and increased confidenceof success. Metastorm Enterprise will uniquely address the three criticalchallenges facing organizations today: -- Understanding the underlying dynamics of the organization, collaborating to ensure the pieces fit together, and creating agility within the context of overall enterprise strategy and architecture; -- Mapping out an end state that maximizes the effectiveness of key business processes, intertwined with other enterprise assets, to achieve strategic objectives; -- Executing optimized, effective business processes with cross-functional transparency and the flexibility to adapt and implement new ideas quickly. "Linkage to the workflow assembly and orchestration engines andbusiness activity monitoring (BAM) tools is driving BPA into the mainstreamfor BP improvement initiatives. Understanding complex business processes isa significant challenge. The assistance of a tool with visualization andother features -- such as simulation and activity-based costing (ABC) --helps to optimize business processes and realize BPM cost and timesavings," states Michael Blechar, vice president at Gartner, Inc. in hisJune 2007 report titled Magic Quadrant for Business Process Analysis Tools,2H07-1H08. In addition, "BPA tools help define the business architectureportion of the enterprise architecture. Many BPA tools can also be used bytechnical, application and data architects to define the technical andinformation architectures. And, because most BPA tools have a sharedrepository for these models, it is possible to do change impact analysisacross organizations and roles based on the inter-relationships of theirmodels." Proforma is known for delivering a balanced solution that meets theneeds of multiple modeling roles within an organization. It delivers arobust knowledgebase of reference models based on published standards,industry expertise and practical experience. Proforma has one of thehighest customer satisfaction ratings in the EA and BPA markets because itis easy to use, bridges the gap between IT architects and business users,and provides a proven set of repeatable best practice frameworks. "Proforma has built a strong market presence based on its ability todeliver powerful enterprise architecture, modeling and analysiscapabilities that are also intuitive and usable by multiple people withinan organization - from architects to business analysts to Six SigmaBlackbelts," stated Ron Pellegrino, president and CEO of Proforma. "We havehad a long-standing vision of completing the business optimization cycle bycombining our market-leading strategy and analysis tools with rich processdeployment and execution capabilities. We have collaborated with Metastormat mutual customers seeking both enterprise modeling and process executionand have witnessed the increased sense of urgency to unify thesetechnologies. By joining forces now, we will be the first to deliver thisunification." The Metastorm Enterprise portfolio is a unique set of integrated, stateof the art offerings that enable visibility across the enterprise and closethe gaps between enterprise strategy and architecture, analysis, andexecution. It includes: -- Metastorm ProVisionEA -- A complete solution for Enterprise Architecture and organizational context - allowing customers to translate business strategy and operational objectives into effective enterprise change through models that describe enterprise assets, relationships and future state. -- Metastorm ProVisionBPA -- A robust suite for Business Process Analysis that enables architects and analysts to document, analyze and streamline complex processes using sophisticated modeling, simulation, Six Sigma and other optimization methods. -- Metastorm BPM -- A complete Business Process Management Suite for roundtrip process life-cycle management - including design, automation, analysis, and monitoring of an organization's human- and system-centric activities and processes. Each product has been recognized by industry analysts as a leadingsolution in its respective market based on the ability to meet a completeset of complex business and IT requirements. Metastorm will offer eachsolution independently or as an integrated Metastorm Enterprise platformbased on an evolving common meta-model and set of shared services.Metastorm will continue to leverage the ProVision Common Interchange Format(CIF) interface and other industry interoperability standards to enableintegration with existing IT investments in applications, legacy systems,and other technologies and to give customers the flexibility to leverageany Metastorm product with third- party software and technologies ofchoice. About Metastorm Inc. With a focus on enterprise visibility, optimization, and agility,Metastorm offers market-leading solutions for Enterprise Architecture (EA),Business Process Analysis & Modeling (BPA) and Business Process Management(BPM). As an integrated product portfolio, Metastorm Enterprise(TM) allowsorganizations to maximize business results by unifying strategy, analysisand execution. Metastorm is the only solution provider to bring togetherthese critical disciplines on a single software platform to enable anunderstanding of enterprise architecture and strategy, accurate impact andopportunity assessment, effective process execution, and accelerated valuerealization for organizations worldwide. For more information on poweringstrategic advantage with Metastorm Enterprise, visithttp://www.metastorm.com .