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Procession, Aerial House Asheridge Road Chesham Bucks HP5 2QB www.procession.com

8th November 2006

Task Orientated Applications (TOA) leads Human Interaction Management Software (HIMS) to next generation business applications

Procession plc, the developer of original and innovative software in Task Orientated Applications (TOA), has published a new paper on the future of business application software.

According to the UK's leading Task Orientated Applications (TOA) software development specialist, Procession plc, the time has come to separate 'information' and 'technology' in application building and hand the business process back to the business stakeholder.

"The key is to recognise that it is people and their daily tasks that are both the source of information and the main drivers in any business," said David Chassels, Procession's CEO

"In reality, there are less than 15 task types in any business, which can handle any eventuality," he explained. "By expressing these tasks as data, we can build applications in a data-centric environment which, in one development environment, contains all today's requirements of business process management (BPM), rules, state, time and user interface.

"For over 15 years, Procession has pioneered the people and task approach to application development," Chassels stated. "Procession has been well ahead of its time - earning an accolade from Oracle in 2003: 'Procession has re-written the rule book for application building'.

"And, while we are still seeing the industry giants 'thinking about it' - we already have 'it'!" he added.

Last year, IBM and SAP published a joint paper ('BPEL4People') looking at people and the task concept. Earlier this year, Microsoft's Bill Gates acknowledged: "We're flooded with information, but that doesn't mean we have tools that let us use the information effectively these products would bridge the gap between information workers and the information they need to be more effective."


Most recently, John Wookey, Oracle's Vice President of Application Development, stated that: "There is a next generation of application expectation that users are going to have about how they get their work done."

"Procession's new white paper summarises why and how application development will change, based upon real experience and knowledge of the now possible," Chassels explained.

Copies of the white paper are available on request from Procession or from Procession's website  www.procession.com.

Ends

Notes for Editors:

The White Paper

The paper summarises the current situation: technology has driven the business application industry but has yet to fully acknowledge the way business really works. It argues that the time has come to separate 'information' and 'technology' in application building and hand the business process back to the business stakeholder. There is increasing recognition of the relevance of Human Interaction Management Software (HIMS). The logical next step is at the application level where the only interaction that people have is via their allotted tasks in the business.

At the core is the need to recognise that it is people and their daily tasks that are both the source of information and the main drivers in any business. The reality is that there are less than 15 task types in any business, which can handle any eventuality. By expressing these tasks as data, it is possible to now build applications in a data-centric environment which in one development environment contains all today's requirements of business process management (BPM), rules, state, time and user interface.

This Task Orientated Application (TOA) approach effectively separates these business fundamentals from the technology led delivery mechanisms, thus taking application development to a new paradigm, which will ultimately see application software become a commodity. The TOA approach effectively closes the gap between business and IT.

The paper concludes by supporting Nicholas Carr's view - 'IT doesn_t matter' - which was published in an article in the Harvard Business Review in 2003.

With a TOA approach, technology becomes subservient to the business. It is how you differentiate the running of your business that matters. A TOA does just that for business people through simple business thinking and logic.

About Procession
Procession is a UK-based and owned company that has developed original and innovative software in Task Orientated Applications (TOA). This TOA approach represents a dynamic alternative to pre-built and/or custom hard-coded applications and represents a paradigm shift in Business Software Development. 

In effect, Procession has created a highly customisable ‘generic’ application and has, in one single technology, moved beyond the beyond the concepts of BPM and SOA to a new enabling ‘platform’ technology to build solutions in its Process Application Platform. 

Procession is a complete and comprehensive application platform. In a single technology, it combines data-centricity, BPM, workflow, rules, state, data manipulation, business intelligence and application platform. Procession has it own presentation layer and built-in message queue for external systems. The recent completion of an extension to Dreamweaver, linking to Procession’s tag library in its presentation layer, now deskills and speeds up the build of working web forms as the user interface. 

In the words of market analysts the Butler Group, Procession's unique, user-friendly technology “removes the disconnect between requirement and implementation”. It also enables strategic processes to be built as working applications at 20 to 30 per cent of the cost of traditional methods. 

These systems can be added to or modified easily, giving unrivalled ‘agility’. They can also provide management information in real-time to support dynamic Performance Management with guaranteed compliance, as required. 

Procession’s TOA uses an RDBMS (Oracle), along with Java and J2EE application servers and maintains a runtime repository of process data, process state and reference data. The Procession Process Engine uses declarative process definition. There is no code generation and no custom coding. This unique feature means that business analysts and operational managers who understand the vital operational processes can implement and modify those processes. In practice, Procession has cracked the code for the closed loop linking business and IT - a still sought-after goal by some of the world’s largest software technology companies.

Further information from:

David Chassels, Procession: 01494 781 444 ; 07774 681773 (mobile)
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR: 01727 860405