PragmaDev is a French company based in Paris specialized in executable modelling. PragmaDev provides two lines of product:
PragmaDev Process is a simple and powerful tool that aims at helping business process modelers to verify their models. It integrates a Business Process Model & Notation (BPMN) editor, executor and explorer.
PragmaDev Studio is a tool to specify and design communicating systems. It integrates four different tools based on international standard technologies. PragmaDev Specifier helps system engineers to unambiguously specify and verify the functionalities of the system, and define the best architecture for performance or energy efficiency. PragmaDev Developer helps software designers to write maintainable and self-documented code. PragmaDev Tester helps testers to write validation and integration tests with an abstract dedicated language. PragmaDev Tracer is a stand-alone tracing tool that is also integrated in the other modules.
Easy Engineering: What are the main areas of activity of the company?
PragmaDev: Because the underlying technology used in our tools comes from the telecommunication industry, that is where we made most of our business initially. Nowadays there are fewer actors on this market and the activity has naturally diminished. But the fact that our modelling technologies were unambiguous, and therefore executable, was of great interest to other industrial domains such as automotive and aerospace. The models are not only a vague abstract graphical view, they are based on a strong semantic that enforces their meaning. This allows to verify they are correct and to present them as a reference that prevails on other representations.
E.E: What’s the news for 2020 about new products?
PragmaDev: Our initial product PragmaDev Studio was targeting at real time and embedded software development. At the end of 2019 we launched PragmaDev Process a new product to verify business processes. It was developed with real use cases from the French Army, Airbus Defence & Space, and Eurocontrol. These organisations have large business process models that must be validated. Our new tool allows to manually execute the models step by step based on the language semantic but also to automatically explore all possible paths of execution. During the exploration of the model, properties can be verified. A property is basically a short high-level scenario that should be always true. This is particularly useful during security and safety assessments. Last but not least automatic exploration can automatically identify deadlocks and unreachable paths using model coverage information.
E.E: What are the ranges of traded products?
PragmaDev: Our tools are very affordable and are suitable for small as well as for large teams. We had projects ranging from 1 up to 50 users. PragmaDev Specifier, the specification part of PragmaDev Studio, is 170€ per month per user. PragmaDev Process is only 90€ per month per user.
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
PragmaDev: Well, modelling is more and more used in engineering and in IT but the more popular it gets the less precise are the models. There are a lot of informal models around that are very vague. When it comes to verifiable models with a strong semantic the models are probably as few as they were in the 90s.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
PragmaDev: The market for business process modelling tools is substantially growing. Large and complex organisations need to formalize their internal processes in order to optimize their efficiency. A proper business process model is also a good way to adapt the organisation in time of crisis. In order to evaluate the efficiency of alternate processes an execution engine such as the one PragmaDev Process offers is required.
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
PragmaDev: Looking at the BPMN market there are a lot of editors available. There are also a few simulators that can run statistical analysis to optimize the models. But a step by step executor strictly following the language semantic was missing. That is what we introduced with PragmaDev Process. We then pushed the model analysis to automatically identify unreachable paths in the model and deadlocks. It might look surprising but it is important to understand that very often business processes are defined by different teams. Even though the teams interact on a daily basis it is not always clear what one is expecting from the other in unusual situations. There are also a lot of implicit understanding between the teams that might not survive when new team members are joining in.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2020?
PragmaDev: The current crisis definitely slowed down a number of decisions but even in these difficult times, because our product is an answer to a real need, we are initiating a number of new projects. No doubt it will be even stronger in 2021 when the world is done with this coronavirus crisis.
