The Process Way: Business Process Management & SOA

Alright, I have off late seen a barage of tool vendors coming out in the market proclaiming themselves to be a Business Process Management System. Tools which earlier used to be CRM tools suddenly add a workflow design and implementation capability and proclaim to be full fledged BPM tools. Quite frankly I have nothing against this, but what i get worried to see is a huge confusion out there of whats a BPMS and whats not.

I think a BPM system can be called good if it allows an organization to manage its end to end processes in a cross functional level to cover process modeling, analysis, orchestration, monitoring and reporting for the process using standards based techniques. In a utopic world if the BPM tool supports both human and system interaction equally well, it would be ideal. In my opinion strictly i do not see yet one single tool which can call its self the superstar, each is maturing. Some of the bigger ones are available from IBM, BEA, Pega etc.

But lets not neglect the smaller niche BPM players, i have seen some examples like clear technologies have tranzax doing case management and workflow for insurance, graham technologies providing crm+workflow/bpm, Advanced Work Distributor. Some of the tools i have seen are quite capable of providing process management and automation to address specific pains of a department in an organization. However, either these solutions will need to scale up or they should provide good service layer for linking to a macro orchestration layer implemented by a bigger/scalable BPMS.

The BPM market should also see a wider acceptance with some of the standards like BPEL/XPDL becoming production quality.

Having said that BPM as a concept and use of BPMS and SOA at a wider level is already showing positive acceptance in the indusrty. I would actually like to throw a small poll or a request for comment here from all readers to provide inputs on any BPM product you have used or using in your current organizations and what are the pros and cons you find in them. If you can also provide any inputs on what level or complexity of processes are being handled by the BPMS it would be of great value. It would then be a good idea to consolidate that information into one post for all’s benefit like a practical BPM product evaluation guide.

ciao!

Just got to know about a bid out there to take over Telelogic. There has been quite a consolidation happening in the tools space and it would be interesting to see how the story unfolds. I remember sometime about rumors of Oracle taking over Telelogic. I think only think Oracle would have been interested in Telelogic for would be System Architect which Telelogic bought a couple of years back from Mr. Jan Popkin. System Architect could have been a good fit into the Business Process Modeling and Analysis piece of Oracle’s Process Management capabilities. Infact SA has some good features and capabilities for e.g.exporting BPEL from BPMN, overall EA support etc. Infact i feel its a gem of a tool. But Oracle have recently tied up with Aris for providing the BPA piece. So, I guess oracle should be out of the game. Whatever is the output my main following would be the future of SA and do wish the product reaches the right organization which can do real justice to a tool which deserves more kudos and coverage. Watch this space as the story unfolds.