Analysts sound off about Eastman Software's WFX

On Tuesday, Eastman Software (Billerica, MA) officially announced a trio of workflow products for Microsoft Exchange, collectively called WFX. When combined with Exchange, according to ES VP Michael Loria, the workflow suite helps "meet the infrastructure and interoperability demands of today's knowledge-sharing environment." We asked Bruce Silver of Bruce Silver Associates (Aptos, CA) and Meta Group's (Stamford, CT) David Yockelson for their thoughts on this new Exchange-based workflow suite.

KMWorld: How do you view Eastman's notion that "messaging" is the next evolutionary platform for applications development? Is messaging truly infrastructure?

Silver: "I've also been one of the believers in messaging as an application platform. Ultimately, I think products like Exchange and Notes become collaborative infrastructure or plumbing, and users will realize it's just stupid not to use it where they can do the job. Certainly the one place users already know to look for new stuff to do each day is their E-mail inbox. That alone gives messaging a close connection with workflow.

Yockelson: "Yes and no. Let's split messaging into two areas: E-mail, which will certainly serve as a platform for certain applications, albeit not those that are highly transactional, complex, require persistence, etc. It will be a great platform for many collaborative/admin processes. Messaging, as in application-to-application communications, is a burgeoning area, and will be the next great leap for workflow/process management facilities. However, products will have to be a cross between pub/sub and middleware facilities like Tibco (Palo Alto, CA), Vitria (Mountain View, CA), Active Software (Minneapolis), MQ Series and "traditional" workflow."

KMWorld: Do you think Microsoft will eventually incorporate this functionality into its operating system? If so, does ES then become a vertical application vendor?

Silver: "Will Microsoft eventually put workflow in Windows? No, but they will eventually get it in Exchange. As you know, a year ago they described big plans to create a fairly rich Workflow Hub environment in Exchange, but the combination of their workflow ISVs freaking out and the technical challenge of building the Hub vision proved too much for even Gates's crew. So they scaled it back. Microsoft (Redmond, WA) just announced a "routing wizard" to be slipstreamed in Exchange Version 5.5 but this is a pretty paltry offering compared to the original Hub plans. Eventually, it's inevitable that a routing and role-resolution engine will be put in Exchange, because Microsoft wants to catch up with Lotus (Cambridge, MA), and Lotus wants to stay ahead on workflow. Eastman was actually the one company that was counting on Microsoft to build the Hub, and still expects Microsoft to do it. That's why you see WFX focused on the desktop management of work rather than routing and roles."

Yockelson: "Basic routing and roles? Yes, but not soon, despite all he "workflow hub" and other things we keep hearing about. Also, if MSFT does build it in, will better facilities be in Exchange, NT, IIS, Outlook clients, etc.? ES and others continue to survive by adding value to Microsoft platform facilities. Someday, MSFT will add better business rule codification, graphical process development/management (which Eastman does not have in WFX), role specification/ management (again, Eastman can't do this in WFX), but not in the forseeable future. Further, MSFT will not provide the higher level services described above, except perhaps as part of MTS (and then it will be a challenge to see how it would perform outside a pure MSFT environment).

KMWorld: What message does this send to other workflow vendors?

Yockelson: "There is still a lot of ground to cover that Microsoft does not/will not. There still sufficient room for competition on the Exchange platform for Keyfile (Nashua, NH), Jetform (Ottawa, Ontario), etc., since Eastman has not solved every problem there as of yet, and there is still lots of room for a workflow capability that is more infrastructure-ready in nature and delivers strong integration, performance, state management/persistence, etc."

KMWorld: How does the overall cost of ownership of WFX ­ and other Exchange-based IDM technology ­ compare with other collaborative products, like Lotus Notes?

Silver: "On cost of ownership, it's a toss-up between WFX and a Notes workflow add-on like ONEstone (Boston), or other Exchange add-ons like Keyfile (Nashua, NH). That's not really the issue. For all of the messaging workflow folks, the battle is really with pure web-based products and with workflow functionality embedded in applications."

Yockelson: "First, one must compare apples to apples. There is Notes software cost plus Notes development and support/maintenance costs. One could argue that to get to a level of similar function (for certain process oriented applications), the pure software cost of a MSFT plus Eastman (or KeyFlow or whatever) solution would be more (perhaps by 3X, depending on volume/number of users), but overall support/management costs (not having to "code" in Notes/Domino to change process et al) would be less. Time to implement also appears to be much sooner with the Exchange-based products vs. Notes/Domino."

<>