I think I know quite a bit about BPM, and while I can't say the same about SOA yet, I'm trying hard to learn. Still, I already know enough to say that when a BPMS vendor talks about how his product is based on SOA, he's not talking about the same SOA that the real SOA guys are selling. Including things like loose coupling, supposedly a foundational SOA concept. Nobody talks about it, it blows my …
You may recall my dinner bet with Ismael last month. He bet I couldn't find 3 BPM implementations that met the following criteria: Complex process (e.g., "more than 100 steps") Integration with transactional systems through WSDL Human workflow through web-based interfaces Modeling and skeleton design done by process analysts using BPMN Implementation done by IT people without writing code No …
Forrester's Ken Vollmer takes issue with my inference that a BPMS truly layered on SOA must include an ESB in order to achieve the "loose coupling" promise. He writes: I guess the one point I would argue with you is that you seem to equate SOA with ESB?s and that is not a good way to think about it. SOA existed way before ESB?s in the form of CORBA and DCOM technology. So ESB?s are a newcomer to …
If, like me, you're still trying to work out how ESB fits in BPMS (or not), or even what the heck it is, you can look at the new Forrester Wave, courtesy of Cape Clear, the nominal winner. Here is the chart posted on their site, and you can download the whole report by registering with Cape Clear.
A frenzy of recent blogger activity around the question of whether the business people who do "modeling" can really build executable processes, by analogy with the spreadsheet. Keith Swenson says absolutely, David Ogren and Jesper Joergensen of BEA echo right on, and Phil Ayres is a lonely voice of dissent. I come down squarely on the Keith/David/Jesper side. A key point -- that with the right …
Assaf Arkin guest-posts an impassioned love-hate note to BPMN on IT|Redux. I admit I only understood about half of it, and I think you'd need to have stayed awake through many a BPEL TC conference call to get most of the references. His first core assumption - that BPMN's deeper purpose is to provide process design portability, not just a drawing - is one I agree with (e.g. here and here and also …
Oracle's Devesh Sharma has corrected my speculation yesterday that the ARIS deal is mostly focused on the dogfight between Oracle Fusion Apps and SAP/NetWeaver. That's one motivation, for sure, but Oracle plans to impact the mainstream BPMS market with the integration of ARIS and Fusion middleware (including BPEL Process Manager and Designer) in an offering intended to bridge the gap between …
I've just finished up 4 new reports in my 2006 BPMS Report series: Lombardi TeamWorks, BEA AquaLogic BPM, EMC Documentum Process Suite, and Cordys Composite Application Framework. They should be going up on the BPM Institute website next week when the webmaster returns from vacation. The BEA report replaces Fuego; the others are new, bringing the total to 10, plus an overview report that explains …
Unlike Sandy, I'm not "totally speechless," but on balance pretty surprised by today's announcement that IBM is buying FileNet for $1.6 Billion in cash. It's really about enterprise content management, but there are BPM implications. The ECM vendor landscape has been consolidating for several years now. There used to be 3 top-tier vendors -- IBM, FileNet, and EMC -- so now there are just 2. …
Despite the inclusion of content management functionality in Gartner's checklist of BPMS must-include components, most BPMS vendors cannot even spell ECM. The few that can -- EMC Documentum, FileNet, Global 360, Pega, IBM -- generally had an ECM business long before they got into BPM. I've been thinking about it more lately as I finish up my report on EMC's Documentum Process Suite for the 2006 …