Business process management (BPM) house Metastorm has joined the fledgling ''BPM in the cloud'' movement, releasing a cloud computing-based version of its BPM modeling tools. Metastorm joins Appian, Cordys and others testing the waters of cloud-hosted software for BPM. Notably, the Metastorm offering operate in the Microsoft Azure Cloud.
Metastorm M3 comprises a popular subset of its modeling tools for business process building. Supported model types include process/workflow, activity, rule, project, requirement, location and other models. Business users employing the tools can chat, whiteboard and annotate models online. The subset of Metastorm models can share a subset of Metastorm objects.
''We are using Azure to host our M3 Modeler,'' said Greg Carter, CTO, MetaStorm. ''The host and repository you store models in are on the Azure platform.''
''It's like a gigantic copy of Windows on the cloud,'' he said, noting that M3 modeling also supports private cloud and on-premise architectures.
While the runtime deployment of the BPM software still resides 'off-cloud,' one can picture a hosted runtime as a next step. The software could help cut time-to-deployment, allowing business teams to forge their models and bring process re-engineering long before IT installs runtime software and hardware.
At the same time it released M3, Metastorm also announced an enterprise mashup system that allows Metastorm's software and other applications to be accessed from a single user interface.

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Cordys