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Procession

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

15th January 2008

[For a related story, see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7187750.stm]

Procession accuses Microsoft of illegally trying to patent its business software - as Procession Whitepaper sets out an alternative approach to IT in business


Procession plc, the developer of original and innovative People & Task Driven and Goal Directed software in its Task Orientated Applications (TOA), has hit out at Microsoft for not playing fair in trying to copy and patent Procession's innovative business software. Moreover, Procession criticises IT vendors whose systems do not have the best interests of their business users at heart.

With research showing that some 70 per cent of an organisation's IT budget is spent on merely maintaining existing systems, Procession plc - a developer of people/ task driven and goal directed software - believes that the IT industry is failing to deliver on some business' basic needs, such as the ability to change applications when required. In a new whitepaper, ‘Simplify IT, More For Less', Procession argues that the status quo complexity perpetuates the division between the IT function and the rest of the business world - and, at present, there is little incentive for vendors to close that gap.

From the first version of its current software, in 1996, Procession has supported the view that people are the source of all information that makes any business," explained Procession's CEO, David Chassels.

"Systems are there to manipulate information and support people in their daily tasks. With many years of research Procession has been able to identify less that 13 task types - human and system based - that address any business requirement.

"Our approach has been to code these task types once and store this in a database to be used and reused as required," Chassels added.

"Moreover, Procession recognised that the user interface had to be embedded into the core offering to enable the correct information to be presented to the right person when required. It is these core design philosophies that Microsoft is trying to patent over ten years after our original development," he said.

"While it is nice to have validation of our approach from a global player, it is of concern that Microsoft thinks it can copy ideas and try to patent them as its own.

"Over the past nine month, I have tried to resolve this in an adult fashion but, regrettably, Microsoft has not reciprocated," Chassels stated. "We have written directly to Microsoft's Chairman, Bill Gates, raising some serious issues but he has failed to even be courteous enough to reply.

"We are a small innovative company that has been ten years ahead of its time. Only this week, we have had to appoint Washington-based lawyers to communicate with Microsoft's lawyers to point out the error of their ways, with supporting evidence."

Chassels explained that, in the UK, software cannot be patented but Procession's prior art is well established. He went on to state: "It defies credulity that Microsoft was unaware of Procession.

"Indeed, this raises some serious issues for Microsoft. I feel that they should do the right thing, play fair and withdraw these patent applications".

Somewhat tongue in cheek, Chassels added: "And an apology from the Chairman would be nice! "

According to Procession's whitepaper, its approach closes the gap between IT and business, allows projects to be highly business focused, delivered quickly with tangible results and with flexibility to change when required. Procession claims that this puts future application development, led by business knowledge, into the hands of business professionals with IT in support.

End

Notes for Editors:

Copies of Procession's White Paper, ‘Simplify IT, More For Less', are available on its web site www.procession.com or from david.chassels@procession.com

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