MetrixBPM has architected and engineered a School District solution, that solved their process integration, application integration, identity management, provisioning and security issues. Though application agnostic, MetrixBPM chose products from Novell’s exteNd, Nterprise, and Nsure suites to solve the IT issues faced by the School District. Their solution will save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars in software, hardware and certification compliance fines during the next few years.

The School District had several issues that they needed to address. Among the most prominent were; business process integration, application integration, information aggregation, identity management and provisioning. They not only needed their applications to share information seamlessly, but had requirements to integrate several key cross-organizational business processes. They also needed a single secure location to display, illustrate and manage teacher, student, and parent administration information. The School District attended several presentations on SIF (student interoperability framework), but found SIF solutions to be too rigid and application integration centric for their needs. Additional research led them in the direction of a more holistic and standards based solution, using Novell products and SIF XML definitions.

MetrixBPM, in conjunction with the School District and Novell’s Solutions Development department, built a robust extensible and flexible framework using Novell’s exteNd-Composer, exteNd-Director Portal, exteNd-Workflow, exteNd-JBrokerMQ, eDirectory, Netware, eGuide and GroupWise. The solution is standards based and allows the School District the flexibility it requires for years of growth. The package included a seamless workflow solution for their Certified Teacher Hiring process, all built from Novell Products. Due to Novell’s loosely coupled architecture, they will be able to build dozens of additional processes on the same platform. The District has numerous process and application integration projects slated for development on the platform. Their exteNd-Portal will increase in size and complexity as they move information applicable to students, teachers, administrators, legislators, and vendors to the web. The Districts use of eDirectory in its architecture will insure that information & application access is granted to the right people in the right place and time.