Siebel Systems recently announced a 'Universal Application Network' as a standards-based architecture for end-to-end business process management; the company characterized the network as "the industry's first standards-based vendor-independent application integration solution." The Universal Application Network is comprised of three major components: a comprehensive business process library, a state-of-the-art business process design tool, and a market-leading integration server. Supported by several leading integration technology vendors (e.g., IBM, SeeBeyond, TIBCO Software, Vitria, and webMethods), the Universal Application Network "is based on emerging Web Services and XML standards." The business process library component is "a collection of prepackaged, end-to-end, industry specific business processes such as Customer Creation or Quote to Order. The business processes are based on XML and Web Services standards and are independent of both the underlying applications and integration server. The business processes include pre-built business process flows, common objects (compliant with industry-specific standards such as RosettaNet and OAG), and XSLT-based transformation maps for mapping between the application data models and common objects. The Business Process Design Tool provides an intuitive graphical tool for developing and configuring business process solutions. The Business Process Flow modeler enables the definition of business processes at various levels of abstraction, and emits Web services-based XML representations of the defined processes; the Transformation Modeler accepts and emits W3C XML [XSD] schemas and XSLT-based transformations."

Website description: "Universal Application Network represents an innovative new paradigm for multiapplication integration. It is the first and only standards-based, best-in-class solution that fully meets the key objectives of enabling organizations to deploy end-to-end, industry-specific business processes while reducing the cost, complexity, and time of cross-application integration. Universal Application Network transforms application integration from a complex and expensive technical challenge into the strategic ability to implement customer-facing business processes across and beyond the enterprise."