SeeWhy Software announced it has partnered with JBoss, a division of Red Hat, to extend and tighten SeeWhy’s support for the open source platform for creating service-oriented architectures (SOA). The SeeWhy business intelligence (BI) platform already uses the JBoss Application Server and leverages other key components of the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite (JEMS). Now, as a JBoss partner, SeeWhy is building tighter integration of its real-time BI solution with additional JEMS software, including JBoss jBPM and the newly released JBoss ESB.

SeeWhy’s event-stream processing technology allows customers to build real-time metrics, alerts and actions into any business process. The company’s software interprets business events as they occur by placing them in the context of historical data, and then notifies users of problem and opportunities as they arise. Integration with JBoss jBPM and JBoss ESB will enable SeeWhy to automatically initiate business processes modeled in JBoss jBPM based on SeeWhy’s analysis of events streaming through JBoss ESB.

SeeWhy is able to provide in-process, real-time business intelligence because, rather than relying on data stored in a data warehouse, it analyzes events streaming through middleware such as JEMS. Responses to events can then be initiated as they occur, for example using JBoss jBPM. With the advent of JBoss ESB, customers can more readily build event feeds to the SeeWhy system from JEMS.

“History shows that wherever we deploy applications, business intelligence is always a key requirement of the total solution,” said Charles Nicholls, CEO of SeeWhy Software. “The traditional answer has been to build data warehouses. This won’t work in SOA because business intelligence needs to be embedded as part of the process, not simply reporting on process execution after the fact. SOA enables us to ask the question ‘How can we build smarter, more agile processes?’ Smarter processes require real-time, in-process business intelligence. The real-time nature of the SeeWhy system stems from its unique integration with middleware like JBoss ESB and business process management tools such as JBoss jBPM.”

Pierre Fricke, director of product management at JBoss, said: “We’re pleased to welcome SeeWhy as a JBoss Certified Solution Partner and for the company’s immediate support for the open source JBoss ESB. SeeWhy brings essential new capabilities to SOA by enabling BI to be embedded within processes. We’ve created the product specifically to promote integration of business applications in a SOA environment and believe the SeeWhy platform makes maximal use of its power.”

Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink, said: “Business intelligence has an important role in process execution, and furthermore, as companies adopt SOA, we expect them to include BI in processes in much more flexible, business-focused ways. To do this, BI needs to become real time, service-oriented, and a core component of the infrastructure companies need to build a business-relevant SOA.”