This is a continuation of my review of the IBM et al BPMN 2.0 submission to OMG. The biggest change from BPMN 1.x in the orchestration notation is in the area of event handling. It's mostly positive, but still obviously a work in progress with some very rough edges. One major enhancement is my favorite wish list item, the non-aborting attached event. The proposal provides this for timer, message, conditional (rule), signal, and a new one - escalation - that is a variant of the error event, i.
Yesterday Lombardi updated the analysts with their 1H08 results. They are saying 85% license revenue growth (vs 1H07), 50% total revenue growth, and sales bookings "close to triple" last year, 20% ahead of plan for the year. They added 30 new customers, with growth especially strong in Europe. Average selling price - the make-or-break metric for any software company with direct sales - is up 20%, and CEO Rod Favaron said these factors in combination allowed Lombardi to "
This post is the third in a series of comments on the BPMN 2.0 submission by IBM et al to OMG. For me, process model portability is such an obvious goal of a notation standard like BPMN that it almost goes without saying. But we cannot take it for granted, because since BPMN 1.0 in 2004 the standard has not even provided an XML schema for the serialization. BPMN 2.0 was supposed to address this issue head-on at last.
At Oracle Open World yesterday, industry analysts got a good look at Oracle's BPM strategy and roadmap in the wake of the BEA acquisition. Overall, my conclusion is Oracle is showing the rest of the world the right way to do software acquisitions. BPM is progressing along the path of "interoperate, integrate, unify" that Oracle claims it tries to follow with all of its acquisitions. Before the BEA deal there was the Oracle BPM solution comprised of SOA Suite (in particular BPEL Process Manager) and BPA Suite (rebranded ARIS with a BPEL roundtripping extension), and there was BEA's AquaLogic BPM.
If you're a regular reader, you've probably figured out that my BPMessentials BPMN training is pretty hard core. We hammer on the semantics of the various shapes and symbols, the need to validate diagrams and fix the errors, and we provide a methodology for organizing diagrams for maximum shared understanding - across business units, and between business and IT. Most people taking it have at least some previous experience in process modeling, and live in that twilight zone between business and IT.
On the plane home from Think Tank I had a chance to read Derek Miers and Steve White's book, "BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide." Unlike Packt, the publisher here spammed me endlessly with solicitations to buy but never offered a review copy. I was prepared to plunk down the $40 in Chicago, but Derek just gave me a copy. Which was smart, because now I have to review it. Derek and I compete in the BPMN training business, so I was hoping the book would be good, but not too good.
Packt Publishing sent me a copy of "Process Driven SOA Using BPMN and BPEL" by Juric and Pant, and on the plane to OMG's BPM Think Tank I had a chance to review it. In addition to the usual boilerplate about BPM and SOA, the book promises to show how to do roundtrip engineering between BPMN and BPEL. This would be a useful thing to explain. BPMN-BPEL mapping is a bit of a square peg in a round hole, but tricks and workarounds do exist, and showing how to modify arbitrary BPMN to be roundtrippable with BPEL is an interesting topic.
They would say they never left it, but from a marketing perspective Savvion is suddenly re-emerging from a quiet period with the introduction of version 7.5 and related vertical application initiatives. Since the beginning of the year they have been able to right the ship financially - reporting 6% net profit for the fiscal year, and 16% operating profit in Q3 - while expanding the platform both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal platform extension includes new features like Project-Oriented Processes (POP), content management, business rule management, expanded process intelligence, and platform architecture for deployment in a multi-tenant/SaaS environment.
[This month's column on BPMInstitute.org] BPMN 2.0 is almost here. If all goes as planned, it will be voted on by OMG members in June. Assuming it passes, that doesn?t mean BPMN 2.0 is officially adopted and available in commercial tools, just that it has entered the ?finalization? phase when tool vendors can start building it in. Even though the diagram notation of BPMN 2.0 appears little changed from previous versions, it represents a big step forward.
I've been quiet lately for a number of reasons. A very significant one is the fact I am now participating with the technical team developing the BPMN 2.0 specification for OMG. I am trying to be a good team member and not scream too loudly about the things that are driving me crazy about it. Particularly when the probability is even slightly greater than zero that one or two of my suggestions will make it into the spec.
