BPM Boost: Progress Software Buys Savvion

Progress Software acquired business process management software developer Savvion in a $49 million deal that will boost the company's offerings in "operational responsiveness" software.

"Progress has now become a best-of-breed BPM vendor," said John Bates, CTO of the Bedford, Mass.-based software company, in an interview.

Savvion will become part of Progress' Enterprise Business Solutions Unit. The acquisition will offer new opportunities to Progress' reseller, ISV and systems integrator partners to develop BPM-based solutions for vertical industries, according to Bates.

BPM is emerging as a critical technology for improving business processes to make them more efficient and responsive to customer needs. Market researcher IDC forecasts that the market for BPM software will grow 15 percent a year over the next four years, from $1.7 billion in 2009 to $3.0 billion in 2013.

Last month IBM acquired BPM software vendor Lombardi for an undisclosed sum. And in early December BPM software developer Pegasystems unveiled an expanded alliance with systems integrator Cap Gemini.

Progress is increasingly hearing from customers that need to quickly adapt their business processes to their customers' needs and respond to moves made by their competitors -- what Bates called "operational responsiveness."

Savvion's software already works with Progress products, including those that provide business process event monitoring capabilities, Bates said. One example is the vendor's Apama complex event processing application that can detect changes in situations that create risks or opportunities for a company. The Savvio technology offers a way to adapt business processes to respond to those risks and opportunities. "We see a lot of synergy there," Bates said.

In addition to its core BPM capabilities, the Savvion software has a rules engine, document management capabilities and data analysis features.

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