Cordys set to join cloud forces with Fujitsu

Cordys has announced a new update for its Business Operations Platform (BOP) and a new partner to help push it out to customers.

Fujitsu will incorporate version 4.1 of BOP, as well as Cordys’ Process Factory – its application development platform – into its own cloud infrastructure called the Global Cloud Platform.    

The announcement was made at Cordys’ annual customer conference, Cordial 2011, held in Putten, Holland and attended by Cloud Pro.

BOP for BPM
BOP 4.1 has a raft of new features to enable more effective business process management (BPM) for the likes of managing middleware processes or aiding integration of applications.

The new focus is on collaboration, with Cordys’ chief marketing officer (CMO), Hans de Visser, claiming the firm needed to follow the current trend towards social technologies.

“Social is the next big wave [and] the bringing together between business and IT,” he told Cloud Pro.

“There is a whole new generation of employees who are not used to working with [older UIs]; their UIs are Facebook… more we are going towards support of that model.”

In that vein, BOP 4.1 has extended tagging capabilities, more in-depth reporting and composite business applications to increase the ability of companies to collaborate on processes across their business.

Cordys has also touted the need for simplicity, with added graphical tools and auto-suggesting to help improve processes, and easier installation, configuration and multi-browser support.  

The key message from founder, chairman and chief information officer (CIO) of Cordys, Jan Baan, was that companies don’t need to scrap all of their legacy systems in house and start again with newer, shiny start-ups to take advantage of what the cloud can offer. It just needs a good platform to bring together the two – something Cordys sees as its major selling point.

“To rebuild a whole platform in one environment, to go from the world of legacy and go over to one code base… takes time,” he said, during his keynote speech at Cordial 2011.

“There will still be bespoke in this kind of world… but we can increase productivity by… people becoming not entrepreneurs, but intra-preneuers… integrating these [two ways together].”

Fujitsu tie-up
Fujitsu only recently joined the cloud computing game itself, rolling out Global Cloud Platform to the UK in May this year.

The partnership announced today with Fujitsu will allow the Japanese firm to sell and distribute Cordys products as either a cloud offering within its cloud data centres or as an on-premise solution.

 “Fujitsu is strategically investing in cloud computing and with the ambition of becoming the leading provider of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings” said Chiseki Sagawa, president of the platform strategy planning unit at Fujitsu.

“Cordys technology will help us add value to our PaaS offerings and will fulfil the needs of our customers for value-added services beyond the level of infrastructure.”

Baan claimed the tie-up was as a result of Fujitsu attending Cordial last year, after both firms seemed to be on the same page.

“The only way to break through [with products], which I learned in the 90s, is you need market makers,” he said. “We now have market makers in this room.

A number of customers are already testing BOP 4.1, but Cordys said a roll-out for general availability should happen by the end of September.

Fujitsu will begin offering Cordys products later in the year, making it available in six of its global cloud data centres.