Ismael Ghalimi of Intalio is still a young man but one of the founding fathers of modern BPM.  Maybe the founding father.  Anyway, today he briefed me on what he says he was aiming for all along, a project called Helium.  It’s BPM, it’s a database application builder, it’s CRM and case management, document management, social networking and online office tools.  It’s built for the cloud, all browser-based (Ajax, no Flash.  Runs on an IPad… Ismael seemed particularly fixated on that).  It’s free for 5 users or less, with SaaS subscription pricing for production deployment.

It is very cool.  And there aren’t many BPM products I can say that about.

The difference between Helium and conventional BPM is data management.  Tons of prebuilt business objects built in – contacts, appointments, tasks, etc. – and very easy to create your own.  It’s a short leap from there to CRM, ECM, and case management.  Everything is exposed through widgets that you mash up in various workspaces.  Here is one for CRM.

There is a BPMN 2.0 editor, and coming this fall a native BPMN 2.0 runtime (supports BPEL today).

There is a Mashup Studio where you can graphically extract data from various places, manipulate it, and publish the result to a feed or widget or whatever else you want.

You can select any object – process, document, case, appointment – and in one click create a social BPM collaboration space prepopulated by widgets defined in a template.  Case management seems a natural fit for Helium.

Helium’s social BPM features make the use of that term by other BPMS vendors look pathetic by comparison.

I want it.  (And I don’t even own an IPad.)