Optimizing document-centric processes can be a profitable, if tricky, cost-cutting endeavor. It takes a particularly rare breed of BPM suite to simultaneously integrate your applications, your employees' work habits, and the multitude of documents and customers your organization juggles.

The Bottom Line Bluespring BPM Suite 4.5 Bluespring Software, http://bluespringsoftware.com Good  7.6 criteria score weight Features 8 30% Administration 6 15% Ease-of-use 9 15% Integration 7 15% Performance 8 15% Value 7 10% Cost: Available either per CPU or per user. Typical installation starts at $250,000, although licensing costs can range from $50,000 to $1 million; 18 percent additional annual maintenance requirement. Platforms: BPM Server, BPM Web: Windows Server 2000/2003; BPM Designer: Windows 2000 Workstation/Windows XP; BPM Web, SharePoint Web Parts: Internet Explorer 5.5+, Firefox 2.x Bottom Line: For midtier businesses invested in newer Microsoft-driven solutions such as SharePoint Server and Office, Bluespring's BPM suite offers a good foundation for optimizing human-centric, document-laden operations. Although not without limitations, such as poor engine-administration tools and a limited library, the current toolset can be quickly implemented and will perform well in departmental rollouts. About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

Bluespring Software is one company considering all of this and factoring in the significance of Microsoft applications vis-à-vis midtier corporate workflows.

Recently released Bluespring BPM Suite 4.5 sports a process development IDE, Web portal, and .Net services-based process engine that takes advantage of the new Microsoft Office Open XML document format. In addition to performing dynamic Word and Excel document generation, the system can monitor and extract data from within docs to guide enterprise workflow and power external business apps.

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Bluespring BPM Suite offers some strong provisions for managing complex, human-centric processes, including solid exception management and rollback opportunity, as well as built-in controls to bring geographic insight and calendar data into the mix. Its extremely accessible task-management UI stands out against its competitors. Bluespring also demonstrates a good platform on which to visually construct, deploy, and monitor processes; it is code-free and incredibly easy to use.

Furthermore, with this release Bluespring now extends the reach and capability of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, supplying process triggers and object updates as well as real-time monitoring for the platform. Bluespring easily corrals other Microsoft favorites, including Active Directory, InfoPath, Live Meeting, and CRM 3.0. Another new addition I like is support for Adobe PDF forms.

If yours is not a Microsoft shop, Bluespring's strengths may be overshadowed by the fact that its entire platform demands MS-branded servers, databases, and IE for its Web portal (although Firefox 2 worked fine).

My biggest disappointment was found in its debugging feature set. Unlike Lombardi TeamWorks, Bluespring offers no design-time simulation, impact analysis, or closed-loop feedback features. As a result, iterative process optimization, the ultimate ambition of BPM, becomes a less-than-intuitive endeavor.

There's also limited compatibility with real-world execution and modeling standards such as BPEL/XPDL (Business Process Execution Language/XML Processing Description Language), or the BPMN (Business Process Modeling Notation) support found in Appian Enterprise. I suppose this is less of an issue if you plan never to do business with anyone off an MS platform.

Although the visual process design tools are good, they have yet to evolve to more collaborative ideals that can help collapse the design cycle and encourage team input, such as those seen shaping up in Lombardi Blueprint.

All told, I found this to be one of the easiest BPM products in the market to roll out -- a good way to reduce custom code costs. It has a particularly user-friendly Web portal interface that will get users quickly on board. Companies invested in Microsoft apps and looking to swim into the deep end of BPM will find a refreshing change in the cool waters of Bluespring BPM Suite.

Charting a course
The Bluespring Designer offers a fine path to productive process development for business analysts.

The easy-to-use visual interface presents a palette of drag-and-drop activities covering all types of automated behaviors, along with access to Active Directory and other MS-specific apps such as SharePoint. The palette also works with MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queuing) and XML, plus it handles synchronous Web services calls. Just drag them to the canvas and fill in the blanks to configure.

I found good tools for defining path logic, support for subprocesses and multibranch parallel routing, thanks to "wait on" and "timeout" event activities and active monitoring of external data sources such as e-mail, files, and SharePoint.

There were some minor bumps in the IDE: the absence of swim lanes for clear delineation of responsibilities across departmental boundaries; easy collapse or selection of subprocesses; or even a simple undo option to backtrack from a formatting error. But, the platform otherwise performed well and really made quick work of process layout and configuration.