Verity Fortifies LiquidOffice

Version 4.0 represents the fruits of two acquisitions last year by the Sunnyvale, Calif., content management vendor. Verity bought Cardiff Software -- and the channel that sold and supports its LiquidOffice and TeleForms applications - in February 2004. Last December it acquired Dralasoft, developer of business process management software.

In Version 4.0 of LiquidOffice, Verity combines its search technology for analyzing and delivering unstructured data with Dralasoft's advanced BPM features. The results, said Suresh Ramaswamy, vice president of BPM Strategy (and former Dralasoft president): "We've taken Verity's search technology and made it available in the context of a business process. That means you now can look up the content associated with a process - whether it's in emails, CRM systems or documents -- while they're in flight."

According to Ramaswamy, LiquidOffice 4.0 creates a "process content index" that keeps track of the steps completed in a process, the authorizations gathered along the way, and the full range of documents involved in the process. "So if I'm negotiating a new order with Dell, for example, I can peek into all of the purchases now under way with them, confidently say there's $100,000 worth of business currently on the table, and drive additional discounts."

Besides adding BPM capabilities, Verity has also enabled the forms designer and processing application for a services-oriented architecture. "We've exposed all of the functions - such as processing modeling, process optimization and forms presentation as Web services," said Ramaswamy. "That high level of abstraction means resellers can quickly build solutions."

Verity also said the new version now provides enterprise-class scalability and security.