UK-based Procession Chief Executive hits out at Software Industry in his presentation at the Open Group Conference

Speaking at the IT Architects Conference, organised by the Open Group and held in Miami, Florida, David Chassels – CEO of the UK-based Task Orientated Applications specialists, Procession plc - endorsed the leadership in technology that IT architects hold in business to ensure the delivery of business applications across the enterprise.

However, he went on to be highly critical of the way in which applications are currently built - being overly complex, expensive, lacking in agility and having a poor rate of successful implementation. According to Chassels, respected informed sources are now recognising that there is a need to rethink this area of building applications in order to reach a mature model that is sustainable over the 21st Century.

Chassels explained the logic behind thinking about both people and tasks when building applications. He added that, by recognising that this is how business actually works, this makes possible a radical, more efficient and effective approach to application building.

Chassels described this new approach as ‘Task Orientated Application’ (TOA) - a paradigm shift in business software and the latest revolutionary technology to come from a British company.

Chassels commented: “TOA is a generic application that removes the interpretation gap between the business and IT functions, allowing business ‘knowledge’ to be digitised to provide business control, agility and competitive advantage.”

He explained that this was achieved by the separation of business fundamentals and logic - which never change - from the communication technologies, which do.

Chassels said that Procession’s years of research and development had started with a deep analysis of business activity. This had concluded that there are fewer than 15 task types that any business needs to recognise in order to build any computerised application.

This analysis has also revealed that, by expressing these tasks as data in a relational database, it is possible to eliminate the overly complex ‘component approach’ to building applications.

In Chassels’ view, cynicism by business about the software industry and the relative maturity of the suppliers has made it difficult to have this TOA approach widely recognised. However, he added, the recent commentaries from IBM and SAP in their joint white paper about BPEL4People - as well as Bill Gates acknowledging the need for tools to ’bridge the gap between information workers and the information they need’ - support the change to a new approach where people are at the core of any new business software.

Chassels explained that such a paradigm shift brought with it some challenges to the way the current market behaves. The removal of the gap between ‘IT’ and ‘business’ would make business knowledge the driver for applications, thereby removing a layer of cost and complexity.

He concluded that this would see the end of remote, offshore application development - which would become inefficient, relatively expensive and, thus, obsolete.

End


Notes for Editors:

About Procession
Procession is a UK-based and owned company that has developed original and innovative software in Task Orientated Applications (TOA). This TOA approach represents a dynamic alternative to pre-built and/or custom hard-coded applications and represents a paradigm shift in Business Software Development.

Procession has created an Integrated Application Development Environment with, at core, a process engine in a data centric and task oriented architecture, linked to a best in class database and forms development package. Where it differentiates is in the build process which focuses on people and their interaction with in its TOA applications to ensure efficiency, data integrity and quality.

In the words of market analysts the Butler Group, Procession's unique, user-friendly technology “removes the disconnect between requirement and implementation”. These TOA systems can be added to or modified easily, giving unrivalled ‘agility’. They can also provide management information in real-time to support dynamic Performance Management with guaranteed compliance, as required.


Further information from:

David Chassels, Procession: +44(0)1494 781 444; +44(0)7774 681773 (mobile)
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR: +44(0)01727 860405