About time: Microsoft to introduce Business Process Management tools this week

This week, Microsoft will unveil its first ever BPM (business process management) offerings.

This BPM will come in the form of new dashboard tools and analytic applications for planning, budgeting and corporate financial management.

From what we can tell, these tools will be compatible with tools that can be used in seamless conjunction with Microsoft's SQL Server 2005. The tools are expected to ship beginning later this year, and well into 2007.

The advantages: simplicity and low-cost.

According to a report in this week's Computerworld magazine, some key users have already been testing SQL Server-compatible BPM. One such company is Experian Marketing Services of Costa Mesa, Calif.

Experian Marketing vice-president of technology development Eric Tagliere tells Computerworld's Heather Havenstein that his company has been using these tools for the last six months. The goal: to process large data sets about potential customers for retailers, financial services firms, catalog companies and other businesses to use in marketing campaigns.

"Microsoft hd to make some chanes to how their software processes some things to provide us the speed and scalability we need," Tagliere says.