Cracking the workflow barrier

Achieving the goal of executing 100,000 workflow steps in a day--10,000 people performing 10 daily tasks each--was Ultimus’ goal for its new solution, and the company says it has accomplished its mission with Web-based Workflow Suite 5.0.

Designed for general-purpose business process automation, the software enables companies to integrate their partners and suppliers into workflow processes to meet increased customer demand.

Ultimus explains the parameters of its scalability testing: Version 5.0 was tested over a period of 14.5 hours with the assistance of 28 individuals. An Ultimus Workflow Server, running on a Microsoft Windows 2000 Application Center Server cluster of three servers and a separate database server, was used for the testing. All dual processor 800 MHz Pentium III servers with 1 gigabyte of RAM ran constantly at 100% CPU utilization, attesting to the heavy workload. More than 50,000 transactions involved human participation in workflow steps while more than 50,000 steps were fully automated with workflow robots Ultimus calls Flobots.