Lombardi's Jim Rudden posts an admittedly "cranky" piece about software giants like SAP crashing the BPMS party. His beef with those companies, which he calls Stackers, is that they pursue the promise of BPM half-heartedly. Actually, they have done everything in their power to bury BPM deep in what they view as their real market... which in the case of SAP and Oracle, he says, is enterprise apps, and in the case of IBM is.
One of BPMN's most important elements is unfortunately also the most misunderstood. It's called a pool, a rectangular shape that serves as a container for a process. So in that sense a pool is synonymous with a process, and that's as basic as you can get. The confusion sets in when you understand that a business process diagram (BPD) - the top-level object in BPMN, describing a single end-to-end business process - frequently contains multiple pools.
I released the BPMS Watch Ratings report last month, available to subscribers on this site and on BPMInstitute.org. Each of the 11 BPM Suites evaluated was scored on the same set of capability categories, based on a weighted list of features/attributes, including "Strength of Execution," representing a subjective catch-all attribute. Three process types described in the report - production workflow, case management, and integration-centric - apply different weightings to the various capability categories, but use the same score for each category.
I will be speaking at BPMInstitute.org's Business Process Management Conference as well as providing Training at the Hyatt Regency in Reston, VA over June 24-27. I will be presenting at the conference a keynote titled BPMN and Business-Empowered Implementation, as well as instructing my 2-Day Training Course Process Modeling with BPMN . I recommend you consider attending both conference sessions and training courses to get the most out of the event.
CMP's TechWeb syndicates my blog, and someone posted a question re my recent post about The Future of BPM at BEA/Oracle. When I tried to reply, the CMP site rejected it for sexual innuendo or something. You be the judge. The comment: I did not see any speific remarks about Aqualogic in your article and pose this question to you: Given the current apabilities of Aqualogic and Oracle's existing 'positioning' of its (OEMd) BPA suite, would not Oracle be able to deliver its BPMS offering that way (I think that's what you are saying) BUT also support the business apps (BPM+SOA) using the same 'tools' (thereby eliminating the requirement & assoiated additional EBITDA impact of having to use the OEM ARIS offering)?
I see my friend Jesper is moving on from BEA, so the reality of the Oracle acquisition is finally sinking in. When I hear people say that Oracle bought BEA for their BPM, I have to laugh. I'm fairly confident the Oracle crew that went after BEA could not even spell BPM. But no doubt the two BPMSs will have to be merged or rationalized somehow into a single primary offering (although IBM/FileNet provides an example of how that can be dragged out for years).
On June 4 at 1pm ET/10am PT, I will be doing a free webcast on BPMInstitute.org entitled "Which BPMS Is Right For You?", calling attention to my BPMS Report series available through the BPM Institute site, as well as the recent Ratings Report, available also here on BPMS Watch. The BPMS Reports cover 11 leading offerings - Appian, BEA, Cordys, EMC, FlowCentric, Global360, Lombardi, Oracle, Singularity, SoftwareAG, and TIBCO - and the Ratings Report provides a comparative scoring in 3 process types, Production Workflow, Case Management, and Integration-Centric BPM.
A lot of speculation about the fate of BPM and other BEA goodies after what Sandy calls "the Borg" has its way with them. Oracle will reveal all in a public webcast on July 1 at 9am PT/noon ET. To the analysts they wrote: On July 1st at Noon EDT/9:00 am PDT/5:00 pm in London, as part of the "Welcome BEA and Middleware Strategy Briefing" webcast, Charles Phillips and Thomas Kurian will explain how the addition of BEA products to Oracle Fusion Middleware will create a best-in-class combination.
The $10 Million series A funding announced by Appian today will be used to expand in a number of areas - marketing, sales, and professional services - but of most interest to BPMS Watch readers, I think, is accelerating the company's BPM-in-the-cloud offering, Appian Anywhere. Appian is one of very few BPMS leaders actively pursuing the SaaS model, and they believe they are ahead of competitors in both the "vision" and the technology.
Having long held the inside track, the BPDM camp has felt little need to advocate publicly for its vision for BPMN 2.0. However, with united opposition from IBM, SAP, and Oracle, EDS's Fred Cummins, co-chair of the BMI task force in OMG (responsible for BPMN and other BPM standards), has begun something of a public defense. His first post addresses the concern that BPDM is "too complex." He begins by acknowledging that BPMN and BPDM sprang from different goals: BPMN focused on defining a graphical notation that was consistent with the way business people think about business processes.