CTO Wolfram Jost kicked off Day 2 of Innovation World with the vision and strategy behind creating the Digital Enterprise. And the most interesting point was that behind all the discussions around the four forces at the heart of it all is still process.
Processes are defined end-to-end, Jost explained, but the problem lies in that IT architecture is still seen as functional and silo’d. IT systems today are just not built for speed of change and agility and the point of becoming a digital enterprise is moving away from that and shifting the power of process back into the hands of the business.
Wolfram went on to explain the story behind the Software AG Suite, that each solution provides a layer to enable the road to a digital enterprise.
- In-memory data management
- Integration
- BPMS and Intelligent Business Operations
- Events and Analytics
This explains the recent acquisition strategy Software AG has taken to build its portfolio with Apama, alfabet, LongJump, Nirvana and JackBe, all providing their own layers.
Of course no CTO keynote would be complete without demos and product announcements and they came in plenty.
- Software AG Live PaaS vision for a unified cloud offering
- Process Live for real-time process modeling and collaboration
- Portfolio Live for IT portfolio management
- AgileApps Live for cloud based application development and case management and
- Integration Live for cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on premise integration
All except Integration Live are now available, with IL coming in 2014. Fill your boots !
Of course there was more enhancements from Software AG’s existing suite of solutions too.
- ARIS new user interface that matches the social aspects and look/ feel of Process Live
- Mobile BPM
- Elastic ESB using virtual private cloud as well as public and private cloud
- API management
- IBO including in-memory analytics and complex event processing
- In-memory data management, where Jost explained that Terracotta will become the new system of record
And last but very much not least, John Bates took to the stage with a really cool demo of Apama integrated with facial recognition software and external sentiment analysis that showed off how customer experience and price-setting can be set dynamically using Apama and analytics.
This pretty much set the tone for the rest of the day, filled with customer stories and track sessions explaining just how all these solutions can make a difference to business and beat the competition.
Oh, and the Terminator ?
Well if you were there it was a bizarre sight to see, and with the Innovation World app you could interact with the musical show live on stage, a sort of Tap-Tap Revenge for Software AG.
I wonder whether Armin van Buuren knows he can use Software AG solutions for trance music…