Software AG has announced that the ARIS Community has passed the 100,000 membership mark within 22 months of its launch. The world’s largest business process management (BPM) community enables new levels of collaboration among individuals, businesses, and universities in analyzing, visualizing, and sharing business information.

Capturing and collaborating on an organization’s intellectual capital is increasingly seen as a source of competitive advantage and a fundamental step in creating the knowledge-based organization and economy.

Among the highlights of BPM and the ARIS Community's accomplishments are:

• 100,000 members in 22 months: the world’s largest business process management community enables organizations to retain and reuse their intellectual capital and assets
• Intellectual capital, including an organization’s ability to continuously improve processes, is increasingly a source of competitive advantage
• Extreme collaboration is the key to unlocking the full potential of business process technology
• ARIS Express, the free BPMN modeling tool, offers business process analysis to everyone at www.ariscommunity.com

The ARIS Community enables extreme collaboration and learning between process beginners and experts and provides a comprehensive information exchange platform. Process models can then be used in Software AG’s webMethods BPM Suite for implementation, delivering the full “model to execute” value chain. New collaborative work practices are key to organizations fully and rapidly benefiting from the business opportunities presented by business process technology.

“The ability to share content within interest groups and collaboratively create, discuss and share business information—to become knowledge driven—is a source of competitive advantage,” said Software AG’s chief technology officer, Dr. Wolfram Jost. “Extreme collaboration is the only way, we believe, for companies to develop and realize the full potential of business process excellence. The ARIS Community is a major force in enabling this collaboration. We have also seen the power of extreme collaboration across borders in action in the 1 million strong Terracotta open source community for many years, and we are delighted to bring that experience and expertise into our DNA.” 

Launched in August 2009, the ARIS Community is now the largest community in the field of business process management, according to Software AG. The members’ backgrounds range from BPM beginners to experts, from university to professional businesses, from occasional users to full-time project teams. The ability to model processes (EPC or BPMN 2.0), organizational charts, data models or to brainstorm, analyze and visualize business information to support process workers—without any initial cost—was a clear success factor for the community. 

Freely available software such as ARIS Express and ARIS MashZone allows any employee to capture their individual intellectual capital and information assets such as presentations and spreadsheets and use them as input for a process initiative. The combination of ARIS Express and the ARIS Platform allows organizations to directly reuse these assets by the BPM experts.

Members of the ARIS Community can also use Software AG’s full webMethods product suite to implement process models created through ARIS Express. The community provides a step by step introduction utilizing international expertise and free technology to full Business Process Excellence. 

Community Facts:  

• More than 100,000 Members in more than 40 countries   Largest BPM Community worldwide  
• Multiple country specific interest groups (e.g. US, Russia, Germany)
• Multiple industry specific interest groups (e.g. Public sector, metal industry)
• Multiple subject matter interest groups (e.g. BPMN, Process Intelligence)
• Content sharing of processes, organizational charts, BPMN 2, data, applications, brainstorming (via ARIS Express)
• Over 120,000 ARIS Express downloads (Free modeling software)   Over 17,000 ARIS MashZone downloads (Free analytical software)

Business Process Analysis is now available to everyone at www.ariscommunity.com/aris-express.