With the release of SharePoint 2010 fast approaching, there’s been more research on how it might help enterprises especially in the area business process management. Oracle has also added to its business process portfolio while data security is still a major concern.

SharePoint And BPM

If you’ve ever had the suspicion that Microsoft’s positioning of SharePoint as a collaboration platform was too narrow then new research from Forrester would agree with you.

The report entitled SharePoint And BPM -- Finding The Sweet Spot shows that despite Microsoft’ (news, site) best efforts many enterprises are using it as a business process management platform.

In fact, nearly half (47%) of 220 IT decision-makers said it is used as such more so than products from EMC, IBM and Oracle, as well as BPM providers Lombardi, MetaStorm and Savvion.

And if this is true of SharePoint 2007, then it will be even truer -- if you can say that! -- of SharePoint 2010 where the BPM features are better developed, even if they are not as effective at business process management as much of the software currently on the market.

Features that are encouraging use of SharePoint as a BPM include SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio integration, among other capabilities.

However, to develop an enterprise-wide BPM strategy, users will have to add a SharePoint-oriented BPM suite which will raise vendor license costs but cut TCO and risk. Want to know more?

Extending SharePoint Using The Cloud

Meanwhile, if you want to find out how to extend your SharePoint environment using cloud applications, SpringCM (news, site) will be offering the second in a series of free online webinars on Tuesday, April 13 at 12pm Central time.

This one-hour event, co-hosted by Carl Frappaolo of Information Architected outlines a step-by-step approach to support enterprise content management strategies by extending existing Microsoft SharePoint systems quickly. If you’re interested you need to register.

Are You Keeping Secrets?

RSA, The Security Division of EMC (news, site) and Microsoft have published the results of a commissioned global survey which shows that while companies are finally getting around to introducing data protection software for compliance purposes and against leaks, they are currently doing little to prevent against data theft.

Nearly 90% of enterprises surveyed agreed that compliance with PCI-DSS, data privacy laws, data breach regulations and existing data security policies is the primary driver of their data security programs.

Why is this significant? The research points out that theft is more costly than lost information as lost information cannot be used against you. Stolen information can. Conducted by Forrester for RSA and Microsoft you can check it out at the RSA and Microsoft websites.

Oracle Extends BPM Capabilities

Another company with growing interest in the BPM market is Oracle (news, site) which has extended its reach with the releases of AutoVue 20.0.

Using AutoVue’s open and standards-based integration capabilities users can integrate AutoVue into enterprise applications and visually enable them to access documents stored in various content repositories across the enterprise. The latest release also introduces a new architecture that makes it entirely scalable.

AutoVue extends business processes for Oracle’s Primavera P6 Enterprise Project Portfolio Management 7.0 and Oracle’s Primavera Contract Management 13.0, allowing users access AutoVue capabilities within their Primavera dashboard.

BPO Growth In India

And some more research on BPM. This time from Gartner (news, site) who is saying that the business process outsourcing (BPO) market in India is estimated to grow 19 percent through 2013.

The domestic India BPO services market grew by 7.3 percent year on year in with estimates of growth into a US $1.2 billion market by 2011 and US $1.8 billion by 2013.

In fact it’s the whole Asia/Pacific region that looks set for growth, the research shows with increasing affluence in Asia/Pacific rejoining continues to drive shared services and BPO adoption, especially in Australia, India, Southeast Asia and China. Want to know more?