Years ago, when talking to customers, I realized the importance of workflow engines that are integrated with content management solutions. However, "workflow" solutions had been around for a long time and never really made it into the mainstream. They had an aura of complexity to them and came in so many different shapes and forms, that it was next to impossible to find a standard way of integrating them with Line of Business systems.

 

The introduction of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) in 2006 also caused some disruption, as it came with its share of bugs and issues. But it also showed how much demand is out there for a workflow engine, as the blogs and forums filled up pretty quickly, which indicates how much momentum the WF has gained by now.

 

However, the best evidence for how much value customers see in real workflow solutions was a recent article which stated that SaaS Provider (modern word for: hosting company ;-) Emantra is absorbing the licensing cost for Nintex, which is a solution built on top of WF, making it much more easy (especially for non-programmers) to ad-hoc build workflow solutions.

 

Whether customers will go with solutions like Nintex, or the plain WF is being used, or another workflow engine, I am sure people are now finally grasping the fundamental advantages that a "real" workflow solution provides over "so-called" workflow solutions that scripted, based on simple trigger mechanisms, or cobbled together otherwise.