Today Software AG announced a tight integration between ARIS, its leading Business Process Analysis suite, and webMethods, its SOA-based BPM Suite. The integration features roundtripping and continuous synchronization between business-oriented and developer-oriented models in those tools. The medium of interchange is BPMN 2.0 XML. Although the vast majority of existing ARIS assets are in the form of EPC models, an ARIS-proprietary format, Software AG's Susan Ganeshan on the press call said that for many reasons BPMN 2.
Today at Impact IBM announced their next-generation BPMS called IBM Business Process Manager v7.5. At heart it is the unification of WebSphere Lombardi Edition (fka Teamworks) and WebSphere Process Server. Some have called it just "a new coat of paint" on the existing offerings, because the (Lombardi) Process Designer and the (WPS) Integration Designer tools are both still there, and both runtime engines are still there as well. But that misses the point.
Uniting Lombardi's business-empowered process tooling with WPS horsepower and integration was a brilliant move by IBM, one that makes them, in my view, the clear BPMS thought leader (in addition to #1 in market share). But I am willing to bet that if you took IBM's top 20 BPM customers and had a way of identifying the most important BPM initiatives in those organizations, only a small percentage of them would be focused on a BPMS solution.
As result of some spirited back and forth on my previous post with FTF member Camunda, plus response from Oracle (original BPMN 2.0 Examples team member), I have a bit more information on the intent and usage of process dataInput in BPMN 2.0, and whether it can have incoming and/or outgoing data associations in BPMN 2.0. To recap: The BPMN 2.0 metamodel (UML) allows dataAssociation between any item-aware elements, which include dataInput, dataOutput, dataObject, property, and dataStore.
Based on a very successful July class, with 35 students, including several from Europe and Asia, we're going to do another one in September. Save the date - BPMN Method and Style training, live online on September 19, 20, and 21 from 11am-4pm ET (8am-1pm PT, or 5pm-10pm Europe time). The class will leverage some brand new features of itp commerce Process Modeler for Visio v5.6. The price of the training is $1095 for 1, $995 each for 5, or $895 each for 10 or more.
Interest in BPM training and certification is accelerating, and being able to understand and create BPMN process models has become a critical foundation skill. We've set the dates for the next 3-day virtual classroom: July 11, 12, and 13 from 11am-4pm ET (8am-1pm PT, or 5pm-10pm Europe time). Check out Sandy Kemsley's review of the last one. [Note: I'm tweaking the content, based on some of her comments. The next one will be the best yet!
I rarely get comments on my obscure techie BPMN 2.0 posts, but this one seems to have legs. Kris Verlaenen of jBPM has a thoughtful response, posted both as a comment to mine and on his own site (to show a diagram). He says, It seems to me, from reading the specification, that data input and output associations are meant to be "local", by which I mean they are not intended to be referenced from outside the element in which they are defined.
I have run across 5 BPMS vendors interested in my BPMN-I work: Activiti, BonitaSoft, Oracle, SAP, and IBM. Of the five, BonitaSoft is so far the most successful in actually implementing BPMN 2.0-based model interchange. Not only that, they are the only one so far that has implemented any of my suggestions for conforming to the xsd and BPMN-I. Here's an example. I created the following diagram in itp commerce Process Modeler for Visio: That's the top level diagram.
The second edition of my book BPMN Method and Style is now available. It just went up on Amazon US today, not yet in UK. Here is the link to the Amazon page. Wow, that was a lot of work. I've moved the book's website www.bpmnstyle.com to a section of this site, making it easier to maintain and respond to comments. I decided this time to wait for the printed book before I sent off copies to reviewers, so reviewer comments should show up on bpmnstyle.
The questions of BPM vs Case Management, process vs case, and - almost too horrible for some Case people to contemplate - BPMN extensions for case management - are getting all frothy again. Here is my take on the topic. 1. The question is BPM part of case management, or is case management part of BPM? is a metaphysical one. I think, however, it is a proxy for the real question, can a BPMS do a good job with case management, or do you need a special dedicated tool?
