Today Global 360 announced the completion of a $200 Million management buyout led by TA Associates, with participation by Technology Crossover Ventures and JMI Equity. The buyout reaffirms the leadership of the current executive management team, led by Michael Crosno, and is intended to further the company's long-term growth strategy. Global 360 is an interesting organization, with technology that goes back to the earliest prehistory of BPM. Under founder Sonny Oates, G360 - originally called eiStream - was successful at rolling up traditional workflow and imaging companies struggling to make the transition to what we now call BPM.
[Originally posted on IT|Redux]
In his new blog on ebizq, David Ogren of Fuego offers a spirited rebuttal to my charge (and that of others, like Sandy Kemsley) that, whatever its merits in filling out the BPMS magic quadrant checklist, acquiring Fuego was a strange way for BEA ? one of BPEL?s initial sponsors ? to go about it. While admitting that he (like the rest of the Fuego guys I?ve met) probably falls into the category of ?BPEL-haters,? he says that the Fuego engine in fact executes BPEL in addition to its native XPDL-based language. My impression had been that FuegoBPM could import BPEL but immediately converted it for editing into Fuego-native, i.e., a one-way trip? once out of the tube that toothpaste was never going back in. But I could be wrong.
I'm trying to get deeper into this blogging thing and looking for more interaction with readers, so here's an experiment. There's a new poll widget on BPMS Watch that lets you tell me who which vendors and products you'd like to hear more about. With so many vendors out there, your input will help shape the focus. If the one you like isn't on the list, check Other and say who in a Comment on this post.
The current issue of Business Integration Journal has an interesting piece from Oracle about my favorite topic, how to keep process models (e.g. BPMN) and their BPMS implementations (e.g. BPEL) in sync, what we call the round-tripping problem. I've repeatedly expressed my view that if BPM 2.0 is going to deliver real benefit over what we have today, this capability is essential, but others believe just as strongly that - especially when BPEL is the implementation technology - round-tripping is a mirage, fool's errand, or worse.
James Taylor's blog on ebizq points to another piece on that site which asserts not only, as James paraphrases, that BPM and SOA are no "silver bullet" for the business-IT alignment problem, but that they are at their core no different from all previous attempts to bridge the business-IT gap. Zygmunt Jackowski, PhD, who describes himself as a BPM Specialist with the Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, poses the question this way: 1.
Sandy Kemsley wrote a note recently commending the upcoming BPM Think Tank in DC May 23-25, and I want to second that emotion. It's put on by OMG, who absorbed BPMI.org in 2005. If last year's version is any indication, this is the one event where those who really "get" BPM can mingle and argue and generally move the ball forward. Probably as close as we get to "BPM camp." Early bird discount is available until May 1.
I'm back from the Brainstorm BPM and SOA Conference in Chicago this week, where I spoke on Selecting a BPMS to the BPM crowd and tried to explain BPEL to the SOA crowd. In an event like that my presentations stick out like a sore thumb, as the typical conference attendee is really trying to learn "how to do BPM," which in that context means documenting the as-is process and modeling an better way to do it against the backdrop of a traditionally stovepiped organization.
I'm off now to do a keynote for Unisys on "The Future of Content and Process Management" at their conference center at St-Paul-de-Vence, outside of Nice. They run their own 5-star hotel in the grand French style for their best customers. I've been there before, and this is really the best gig going for an industry analyst/consultant. After that a couple weeks' vacation in Provence and Sicily. I may not be blogging much until May.
I received an interesting email yesterday re my BPM 2.0 manifesto from a professed "process analyst" I know: Another good one, Bruce? I'd quibble only about the role defs for "business analyst" (a common misnomer in vogue in IT today that should be titled "requirements analyst" since they don't really analyze the business or assist the business in developing strategies, workplace design, etc.) and "process analyst" (being a technically oriented position - when there are already a bunch of process analysts out here and our primary role is doing all that stuff that the business analyst doesn't do?
One cool thing I saw at Brainstorm BPM was a demo by Cordys of their BPMN-based process designer. I hadn't heard of Cordys, which is based in Amsterdam , but they sent me the latest Gartner MQ of the "ISE" market (Gartner's term for SOA management/orchestration platforms -- why do they do this?) where Cordys came out highest in the "completeness of vision" axis. Anyway, they have a really nice BPMN designer, supporting intermediate events and other "
