11/14/2006

Intalio, Inc., an Open Source BPMS Company, today announced that Animal Health Services (GD), the execution arm of the Dutch Agriculture cabinet, has successfully implemented Intalio|BPMS, the first BPMS to support Zero Code development for complex business processes that include Web Services orchestration and Web-based human workflow.

ebizQ received the following details:

Using Intalio|BPMS, GD has automated approximately 250 million complex, long-lived processes, each of which can take up to five years to complete. As a result of the Intalio implementation, GD has made it faster to change the certification process when the outbreak of a new disease threatens the country’s livestock. Now, each animal is part of a process that GD can easily trace and monitor. Securing the health of the livestock, GD knows which certifications have been performed for an animal at each stage of its life.

“As the certification process for the farm animals evolves, we have to be able to change the process on the fly, which we can do with Intalio,” said Prof. Dr. A. Pijpers, director of the Dutch Animal Health Service. “We now have a central software application that lets us bundle our certification programs for all animal species into one system, thus making them work together.”

Arnaud Blandin, EMEA manager for Intalio, said, “GD is a very innovative company that has proven that BPM technologies can be applied in a pragmatic manner to enhance the way companies really work. Intalio|BPMS lets GD react more rapidly to new diseases affecting Dutch livestock.”

Mad Cow Disease Drives BPMS Adoption

With the 2004 outbreak of Mad Cow disease, GD realized that it needed to modify its certification program in order to expedite the release of eradication and prevention programs. The old system comprised eight, interconnected back-end systems and several integration points, all of which caused longer test periods and unacceptable delays.

In addition to one quarter billion long-lived processes, several more challenges stood between GD and faster times-to-market for eradication and prevention programs. For instance, the macro process map has 250,000 steps. Each step would require 100 lines of Java code. The system is designed for 100,000 farmers, a few hundred veterinary practices, and up to 50 larger organizations. And, changes must be applied on a regular basis.

Identifying BPMS as the optimal technology to improve its existing system, GD selected Intalio over its competitors, including Oracle. Critical decision points included the Zero-Code development paradigm of Intalio|Designer, which lets users visually design and implement processes. As noted earlier, support for thousands of long-running processes in a distributed environment via Intalio|Server was another key factor, as was the ability to support all the workflow patterns.

Continued Prof. Dr. Pijpers, “Intalio let our business and IT people collaborate on the same processes by establishing a common process view, which helped us avoid translation problems between business requirements and system implementation. In the end, we are able to work more efficiently and intervene faster when an animal disease breaks out, even when several species are involved.”