Thursday, August 18, 2005 4:13 PM
A couple weeks ago I attended a meeting that my company puts on called Xport. It is a get together for consultants to eat, drink, and get to view something in technology that is interesting. This last week, they presented K2.NET.
I had never heard or seen anything on K2.NET. It turned out to be a very cool tool that integrates with VS.NET. It reminds me of the orcastration part of Biztalk on steroids. You have the ability to dictate buisness process and workflow, define very complex rules to the flows and process. It's abilities also include the ability to hook in to other well know and used tools in the organization such as Outlook, Sharepoint, and Biztalk. One note can be used to build form templates for the business and start processes.
Pros Include:
- Visual Studio Addin so you can write custom functionality
- Integration in to well know and used products
- Intuitive enough for customers to understand when being presented to
- and it can map just about any process that you would like no matter how complex
Cons Include:
- The addin functionality only works with both K2 and VS open at the same time (this should be fixed with the next release it is supposed to be integrated in to the VS environment)
- According to the meeting, the licensing is pretty step, so it is very difficult to sell to any mid sized clients (hell even the large clients)
The draw of course is that needs by certain verticals such as Health Care (Hippa standards) and any company effected by the Sarbanes Oxley Act.
I still have yet to use it at a client, but I do look forward to it. If you have done any business process or workflow type of projects, I would look in to K2. It has a lot going for it (other than licensing).
Check them out here.
Until next time..
Michael