UK workflow software vendor Staffware Plc is preparing an enterprise-enabled, more Microsoft-aware version of its main product, a suite of programs which goes by the same name as the company. Unlike last year’s offering, which bore the name of Staffware 97, this year the company has decided to embue the product with more marketing pizzazz, calling it Staffware Atlantic. It is currently at the pre-Alpha stage, with the first beta versions expected to be available in July, according to the company’s technical director, John Pyke. The Gartner Group calculates Staffware has a 26% share of the worldwide workflow software market, making it the leader in the sector. Pyke said the four main factors driving the Atlantic project are: the need to position the suite for enterprise-wide and inter-enterprise applications for virtual enterprises and extranets, supporting multi-node and multi-server environments – the company has added scalability onto last year’s version; requests from customers to include case management in the next version of the product, which Pyke described as ‘single-user workflow within the business process’- he cited the example of insurance claims, which typically have one employee at the insurer assigned to follow the claim through; the ability to accommodate Microsoft technologies – Staffware will ’embed Visual Basic for applications development, enabling the suite to communicate easily with Office 97. Pyke said Atlantic should be available to run on NT5 around the end of this year, and among the technologies which it will be able to support are: IE4; SequelServer 7; the transaction server MTS and Microsoft’s object technology, namely COM, DCOM and COM+; and greater Web functionality, extending the Java-based Staffware Global product launched last year.
