And it seemed creating a ProcessWorld Linkedin was the answer. In just a couple of weeks, with a few Software AG content experts and a plug or two in our existing ProcessWorld communication efforts, we were able to start connecting our customers together. Being ‘social’ is in our Software AG DNA, in fact it is a huge part of our webMethods 9.0 release, recently featured at ProcessWorld. “Your employees and processes will be empowered to react faster based on real-time events from IT systems. Consider it social media tailored to business demands. That’s the reality of our new webMethods 9.0 social innovations.” More information here.

Our customers showed us they had a lot of questions to ask and our product marketers were eager to engage with our customers as well. Here are just a few things we learned from our customers about the importance of mobile access, the impact of social media, concerns deploying to the cloud and how organizations are leveraging big data solutions:

‘extending business processes to mobile devices’ is the most important feature to organizations polled

‘security seems to be one of the biggest concerns in dealing with cloud based software’ compared to service availability, product support and user adoption

‘how and why BigMemory is proving to be a competitive advantage’ for organizations keeping terabytes of data in-memory

‘how organizations enabled social collaboration for BPM’ through focusing on people centric processes and gamification techniques.

And the conversations aren’t over yet. Customers are sharing ideas on how to model KPIs in ARIS as well as discuss scenarios where my-channels and broker co-exist. We don’t want to limit this learning experience and idea exchange to ProcessWorld so join the discussions now and keep the conversations going. It’s been seen, we all have a lot to learn from each other and being social helps drive peer connections and better product solutions.

The post How Being ‘Social’ Helps Customers Connect, Network and Learn appeared first on Reality Check.

“We started these Innovation Awards 5 years ago to showcase what our customer are doing with Software AG products. It’s really about the way our customers are using the tools, bending the way others have used the tools in the past and being innovative and creative. We recognize there are many great areas for value add.”—Ivo Totev, Software AG, Chief Marketing Officer

Each Innovation Award winner receives; free admittance and hotel accommodations at ProcessWorld, a $2,500 donation to the charity of choice and the chance to tell their story live on stage at ProcessWorld. (among a few other valuable perks) Watch the videos on our Innovation Award winners featured at ProcessWorld 2012, panel 1 and panel 2 discussions.

Please help us congratulate our 2012 Innovation Award winners for their great achievements.

• Process Excellence: US Foods- Learn how BPM put US Foods closer to its goal of becoming the industry’s easiest company to do business with. Learn more.
• Innovation: Echo Entertainment Ltd- Learn how the largest casino operators in Australia, turned to webMethods to automate its chip purchase voucher process. Learn more.
• IT-Business Alignment: Royal DSM- Learn how the global science-based company active in health, nutrition and materials, considers BPM critical to support its global business process transformation. Learn more.
• Consumer Service: Fujitsu- Learn how the leading European IT infrastructure provider, adapts faster to customer needs after expanding its investment in Software AG’s webMethods technology. Learn more.
• Return on Investment: travel-BA.Sys GmbH & Co. KG- Learn how the company’s innovation builds on investments in legacy systems and integrates external data seamlessly from SAP®. Reports are created without IT support through a self-service portal. Learn more.
• Productivity: Coca-Cola Refreshments- Learn how BPM is used to automate an equipment repair process and can track the movement and history of reach refrigeration unit to avoid ‘lost’ inventory, identify trends and uncover recurring issues. Learn more.
• IT Transformation: AvNet- Learn how the company advocates a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a way to save hundreds of thousands of dollars and assure a highly available, agile infrastructure. Learn more.

Now it’s time for you to use these stories, to give your organization the reality check it needs to become an Innovation Award winner too. This could be you, so take note of the stories and stay tuned for more details on how and when you can share your innovative story with us.

The post Software AG Recognizes Top Technology Innovators appeared first on Reality Check.

Which makes you wonder how Forrester came up with a simple Wave graphic summarizing a very sophisticated technology space? Trust me, there’s quite a detailed criteria, 109 questions to be exact. Forrester also required detailed briefings, demos and reference calls with customers who are using the rated products in productions.

How is it, that a product conceived 14 years ago, before the ESB category even existed, becomes the number 1 leader in the ESB category today? If you are an enterprise that uses webMethods products, you are very familiar with the corner stones of our ESB platforms – webMethods Integration Server and webMethods Broker. webMethods Integration Server was developed more than a decade ago but it’s original vision and architecture have proven to be amazingly durable. Since its inception in 1997, long before SOA became a common approach, webMethods Integration Server has been service oriented. A service is the basic building block. This simple yet flexible approach combined with powerful connectivity with existing applications and external partners allowed customers to use it as a single platform for Application Integration and B2B Integration. As integration approaches grew more business-focused, SOA and BPMS became popular. It was natural for us to extend webMethods Integration Server with webMethods Mediator and add CentraSite to round out capabilities needed for SOA and BPMS. In the last release, we continued to expand webMethods Integration Server into new software architectures with native support for RESTful services, Events and Complex Events Processing.

It feels great to be in a position where we can give customers the choice of where they start and how they build their middleware infrastructure without forcing them to choose among several incompatible products. One key reason we are in that position is because of our customers and users who are among the most talented and vocal IT professionals out there. We listen to them carefully. Without their feedback – positive and negative – it is unlikely our products would be where they are today.

Now, as we turn our attention towards helping customers connect with and use Cloud applications, we are confident our ESB platform will continue to be a great investment for our customers. We once again find that webMethods Integration Server’s service-oriented foundation is a great fit for cloud computing. We have internally adopted agile approaches to building products which allows us to react to customer needs faster. We have some terrific ideas in the pipeline. And we have customers who will push us even further.

The post What’s the Secret to Being a Forrester Leader in ESB? appeared first on Reality Check.