Tibco Software has been working to link its business process management and integration products so users can more easily re-use application services within company processes. The result is the latest version of Tibco's Staffware Process Suite, unveiled this week.

Tibco Staffware Process Suite is based on technology Tibco gained in its 2004 acquisition of BPM software maker Staffware. Version 10.3 is designed to work more closely with Tibco's BusinessWorks application integration software.

The combination of BPM and integration technologies can help define a service-oriented architecture (SOA), says Jeff Kristick, director of product marketing at Tibco. Together the technologies can help users transform legacy business applications into reusable services, which can be combined and orchestrated to create complex business processes.

By integrating the two product lines, users can take advantage of real-time monitoring capabilities that provide greater visibility and insight into business process performance, Kristick says.

"Because they are both Tibco products, there's a much tighter coupling. We can do things like data validation and end-to-end testing that you couldn't do if Staffware was used with [integration software from] IBM, for example," Kristick says.

In addition, coupling BPM and integration tools can help IT demonstrate the value of an SOA. While SOA is an interesting IT project, the benefits may not be clear to business users, Kristick says. "BPM is an opportunity for IT to say, 'We built all these services for a reason, now you can use them within your business processes, and actually make changes, without us having to go write code for six months.'"