Page 288 -

270 10 Tool Support

1
functionality. ProM is open-source software and can be freely downloaded from
www.processmining.org or prom.sf.net. To extract files from different data sources,
tools such as XESame, ProMimport, and Nitro can be used (cf. Sect. 4.3).
In Sect. 10.1, we criticized mainstream BI products for being data-centric and not
very intelligent. The hundreds of ProM plug-ins implementing all of the techniques
described in this book illustrate that it is possible to support BI efforts using tools
that are process-centric and truly intelligent. Fortunately, more and more analysts
and vendors see the need to support process mining as is shown in the next section.

10.3 Other Process Mining Tools

The functionality of ProM is unprecedented, i.e., there is no product offering a com-
parable set of process mining algorithms. However, the tool requires process mining
expertise and is not supported by a commercial organization. Hence, it has the ad-
vantages and disadvantages common for open-source software. Fortunately, there
is a growing number of commercially available software products offering process
mining capabilities. Some of these products embed process mining functionality
in a larger system, e.g., Pallas Athena embeds process mining in their BPM suite
BPM|one. Other products aim at simplifying process mining using an intuitive user
interface. As mentioned before, the large number of plug-ins of ProM can be rather
overwhelming. Besides these commercial initiatives, there are also several research
groups developing stand-alone process discovery tools. Table 10.2 shows some of
the process mining tools currently available. We would like to stress that there are
huge differences in terms of maturity and capabilities.
In the previous section, we described ProM in detail. Before discussing some
of the other tools, it is important to stress that many organizations (other than
TU/e) contributed to ProM. For example, people from the following organiza-
tions (co-)developed ProM plug-ins (version 5.2 or 6): Technical University of Lis-
bon, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Univer-
sität Paderborn, University of Rostock, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, University
of Calabria, Queensland University of Technology, Tsinghua University, Univer-
sität Innsbruck, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, Università di
Bologna, Zhejiang University, Vienna University of Technology, Universität Ulm,
Open University, Jilin University, University of Padua, University of Nancy, etc. The
reason for mentioning these organizations is that some the more substantial ProM
plug-ins developed by these parties provide more functionality than some of the less
mature tools mentioned in Table 10.2.
Reflect|one by Pallas Athena and Reflect by Futura Process Intelligence are es-
sentially the same product. Reflect is one of the more mature products and can be
used as a stand-alone tool or as a component of the BPM|one suite. Discovered

1 ProM framework is released under the GNU Lesser General Public License (L-GPL).