In offering Blueprint, Lombardi becomes one of the first vendors to offer a SaaS solution for BPM. However, Blueprint is not Lombardi's entire BPM suite. Rather it is one component, covering the preliminary process discovery portion of BPM during which people-to-people collaboration is essential. An end-to-end SaaS solution for BPM may still be a way off.

The hosted solution uses a shared workspace within the browser that non-technical users can use, but it also supports the Business Process Modeling Notation standard for business analysts comfortable working with a standard industry tool.

The underlying data model for the on-premises and SaaS components are identical so that once the processes that need improvement are defined the data is sent back and forth to the hosted solution behind the firewall through a feed similar to RSS.

According to Phil Gilbert, Lombardi CTO, SaaS is the right delivery mechanism to tap the many different players who only understand their piece of the workflow puzzle.

"No one understands big processes from end to end," Gilbert said, adding that he believes in order to assemble a cross-functional team of players, especially when that team is in many cases global and on different systems, SaaS can be used to lower the barrier of participation.