The SAP Solution Manager is the standard tool to blueprint and document SAP ERP solutions.  It concentrates on standard SAP transactions and the scoping and customizing of ERP solutions. On the other side SAP BPM is the SAP tool to automate and execute business processes. Both tools are based on SAP NetWeaver, but they are not linked directly together. You may wonder how to customize your SAP solution and to combine them in a project with the new approach of BPM automation. BPM-X is the tool to link modeling tools, repositories and BPM tools. Different tools can be plugged into the BPM-X model exchange bus by specific adapters.

With the introduction of Visio 2013 Microsoft has dropped the binary data format .VSS and the XML format .VDX for diagram file storage. VSDX was introduced as the new XML data format for storage of diagrams and consists of a ZIP archive with a bundle of XML files. The TransWare developer team added support (see Blog post about Visio 2013) to write and read native .VSDX files for the new data format. In 2015 Microsoft introduced the new Visio 2016.

IBM Rational® System Architect is a one of the leading EA and BPA modeling and analysis tools. It has great functionality; it supporting many standards such as BPMN 2.0 diagram types and famous frameworks like TOGAF 9, ArchiMate v2.0, DoDAF 2.0, MODAF 1.2, NATO Architecture Framework (NAF) 3.0, IAF v4 Integrated Architecture Framework, Federal Enterprise Architecture Framework 2.0 (FEAF 2.0) and last but not least the Zachman Framework. This rich functionality unfortunately, also builds complexity that is obstructive to efficient use by business analysts or project team initiatives like BPR (business process re-engineering) or blueprinting  of ERP solutions. These later teams and much prefer the easy use of Microsoft Visio® to map business processes or to scope existing best practice content for customer requirements.

In 2013 our teams focused very much on customer projects integrating various tools such as ARIS, Visio, CaseWise, Sparx Enterprise Architect, IBM Rational System Architect, OpenText ProVision, IBM BlueWorks, SAP, HP ALM and many others to perfect the universal model translation between different modeling languages, EA frameworks and vendor specific implementation of standards such as BPMN. For 2014 we see a huge demand in the EA/BPM enterprise management market for more operationalization, more agility for faster value delivery to the business and to reduce IT costs.Organizations looking to leverage model assets and build continuous value chains to integrate different enterprise management disciplines, to improve communication between different departments or project teams and to escape from management silos are well recognized requirements and needs from the professional market.