Workflowing Through .NET/J2EE

Business process management (BPM) software maker Oak Grove Systems has launched Reactor 6.0, which features automation functionality across two popular development frameworks: .NET and J2EE .

The Java-based Reactor 6.0 is also Oak Grove’s first foray into enterprise sales, after six years of working behind the scenes to offer workflow automation, business
process integration and Web services orchestration software for ISVs .

The technology, now in beta until the end of July, was first developed at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The biggest improvement to the Calabasas, Calif.-based company’s product is the inclusion of business process automation across .NET and J2EE environments, as well as necessary enterprise tools
like clustering, load balancing and automatic failover.

Charles Ames, Oak Grove founder and CEO, said most companies today are looking for .NET/J2EE interoperability in order to automate processes between both frameworks.

“One of the realities that large corporations face is that they’ve got some
applications based on .NET and some on Java, and would like to operate work
flows or business processes that span those applications,” he said. “To our
knowledge, we’re the only one that does it.”

With Reactor 6.0, officials said customers can “seamlessly blend manual
activities, automated tasks and Web services to form cohesive end-to-end
business process.”

Reactor 6.0 comes in three flavors: Pro, for developers and small
businesses; Enterprise, for corporations; and Embedded, its licensed
technology, with source code access for ISVs. Ames would not comment on pricing. The Pro
version is expected to be based on per-developer pricing, while Enterprise would be per-server/node, not by CPUs or number of users.

Prior to its latest release, Oak Grove was largely a behind-the-scenes player, licensing its BPM software to companies like Sybase and Plumtree , who in turn bundled the software into their own offerings.

Last year, while the company was setting up a reseller network around the
world in order to license more of its embedded software, Ames was already turning his
attention toward a stand-alone product.

“The enterprises started coming after us and we realized that we were
starting to compete for that business and winning that business,” he said. From there, the company began to optimize its product for that market. “Our ISV partners are taking it very well; in all cases our ISVs have built an application that is specifically targeted at a particular business function or industry.”