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Appian World 2012 Beginner Track: Intro to the Appian BPM Suite (BPMS)

Alena Davis, Appian
April 16, 2012

Continuing the beginner track at Appian World, Peter Vaccarella, Senior Sales Engineer, presented an introduction to the Appian BPM suite (BPMS).

Appian Guiding Principles of Modern BPM

Easy to Create

Easy to Deploy

    • Write Once, Deploy Everywhere - All Mobile Platforms

    • Instant availability and easy upgrades

    • Clean deployments between environments

    • Identical platform on-premise & cloud

Easy to Adopt

    • Elegant interfaces - optimized for every device

    • Simple, no-training social interface

    • Same user experience on every platform

Easy to Reuse

    • Reusable license

    • Modular components ñ Smart Services, Expressions, Appian Forum

Appian maximizes rapid application development through a "zero code" approach. This means business people can drag and drop the process applications they need, without any traditional coding expertise. It also means that Appian applications are easily changed because they are based on graphical configuration, not hard-coded customizations.

A huge Appian advantage is that it delivers automation, speed and effectiveness that is personalized to the way an organization wants to work. Process is a source of competitive advantage. Typical enterprise software takes a "one size fits all" approach that eliminates the uniqueness of a company's processes - or preserves them only through cumbersome custom coding that makes upgrades a nightmare.

Mobile BPM

A modern BPM platform must exhibit 3 key characteristics. The first is native mobile access. Appian is the only BPM vendor that offers full-featured native Mobile BPM - with ZERO additional development cost. Any Appian application can be turned into a native mobile app on all popular mobile platforms through a simple series of check boxes. Native mobile apps - as opposed to merely presenting a web application on a mobile device - are crucial. Only native mobile apps can take advantage of a device's unique characteristics and usage modes (e.g. swipes on iPads, virtual buttons on Androids, physical buttons on Blackberries) and enhanced capabilities (pictures/video, voice note recording, tilt controls, geo-location, etc.)

Social BPM

A modern BPM platform must be easy to use - following the best practices from modern consumer applications. Appian's interface requires literally no training. When you look at it, you intuitively know how to use it. And the experience is consistent across all platforms. Appian's social event stream delivers immediate insight into human and system events originating from business processes - including drillable data and reports and automatically-generated notifications and hazards. The stream is entirely personalized to a user's role, responsibilities and interests in the organization based on a user's subscriptions and group profiles. The interface provides an invaluable audit trail of process activity and related discussions for tracking business events and actions, and for increasing organizational knowledge.

Cloud BPM

The third requirement is industrial-strength infrastructure across on-premise and cloud deployments. Appian is the undisputed leader in Cloud BPM, with more production deployments by far than any competitor. Appian is the only BPM vendor to offer code-identical, full-featured functionality in both environments. This makes moving from cloud to on-premise, or vice versa, easy ñ mitigating cloud deployment risk and enabling rapid expansion of an enterprise BPM program.

Appian provides proven scalability and security - both in the cloud and on-premise ñ that cannot be matched by any competitor. One Appian customer - the U.S. Army - has 2.5 million users, 460,000 active processes and over 21 terabytes of data. Appian employs all the latest security features to ensure data protection, and is compliant with all required security and privacy regulations. Appian is the only BPM vendor with an Authority to Operate certification under the US government's FISMA security act.

To view the Appian BPM Suite for yourself, please contact our sales team for a live demonstration.