VOSibilities

In this fascinating podcast, Luc Clément, senior director of products, and Michael Rowley, director of technology and strategy, discuss two very important topics in business process management systems (BPMS): workflow and rich internet applications (RIA). First, Michael overviews the progress that’s been made in the BPEL4People technical committee towards finalizing both the BPEL4People and WS-Human Task standards, hopefully by the end of this year. Then, he elaborates on how these standards change workflow forever and offer BPM development teams apabilities that make it easy to integrate human tasks into automated processes.

Then, Luc describes a a new SDK for ActiveVOS that permits Java developers to take advantage of the WS-Human Task worklist management capabilities. Luc and Michael point out that this Java SDK is just the beginning of what they are planning in ActiveVOS 7.0.

In a more detailed preview of ActiveVOS 7.0 than they have provided in previously, Michael and Luc discuss the architectural value of “eliminating” the presentation tier while coupling an AJAX-based, drag-and-drop UI generation capability directly to the ActiveVOS BPMS.

If you are interested in BPM, workflow, integrating human task and delivery of advanced processes to end users via portals and/or Web 2.0 and RIA technologies, you will find this podcast very informative.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #34: BPMS, workflow and rich internet applications (RIA) [20:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2677)

I’ve just run across a blog I wanted to give a “shout out” to. On Vijay’s Narayanan’s Software Use in the Real World blog, there’s a variety of good technical info, an interesting podcast and some good advice for making some of the more complicated concepts in software resuse comprehensible.

It looks like Vijay only started blogging in March. I hope he finds the time to keep it up. As anyone who’s blogged consistently can tell you, it takes a lot of work and dedication to keep a blog “alive” and interesting.

With 90 days or so under his belt, Vijay might be wondering if it’s worth it. So, head on over to his blog, check out his posts and podcast and help convince him to stick with it. We can all benefit from more voices on good software design, especially from people who are consuming BPM systems in applications they develop in their daily work.

A couple of minutes ago, Luc Clément, our product manager extraordinaire, finally found a couple of minutes away from work on our next (killer) release of ActiveVOS to stop in my office and show me something we’ve just posted to our website that I wanted to make sure readers of our blog heard about.

BPM systems are valued for their ability to combine both people and systems in a process. Further, we strongly believe that standards are the correct way to manage human tasks in extended human-machine process workflows. Therefore, ActiveVOS implements WS-Human Task and as part of that implementation, it includes a standard-compliant worklist UI.

Until now, developers could easily customize this worklist UI via XSLT. Now, we have extended that capability to developers working in Java via a Java SDK we call the ActiveVOS WS-Human Task and Identity Service Kit that permits Java developers to easily combine the power of ActiveVOS human task management with a UI of their choosing. Now, developers can use Java along with the UI framework of their choice to interface with the ActiveVOS WS-HT compliant server.

In the SDK, you’ll find everything you need to take advantage of the power of ActiveVOS’s BPMS combined with your favorite RIA framework. Very cool. We hope you enjoy this new capability. If you need a trial of ActiveVOS to test this new feature, please feel free to download it here.

Active Endpoints has been named to the SD Times 100 list for 2009. Our press release announcing this honor is attached to this post.

This award validates the both the market acceptance of our ActiveVOS business process management system (BPMS) and the thought-leadership that Active Endpoints has achieved with its vision of a BPMS that development teams will love.

Instead of me going on and on about why we cherish this recognition, I’ll just quote Alan Zeichick’s take on what the award is and what it signals to development teams that are considering a BPMS:

Unlike other awards programs, we don’t benchmark application servers, or count defects in operating systems, or consider annual sales values, or ask companies to submit flattering essays about themselves and their customers. The SD Times 100, in fact, isn’t a product award or a marketing award.

Instead, we work hard to identify—and highlight—where the “buzz” is. What are development managers thinking about? What are the talking heads talking about? What are competitors sweating about? What is the industry focused on? That’s the SD Times 100.

Thank you, SD Times and also a big thank you to our customers, who have made our BPM system such a success.

 ActiveVOS named to SD Times 100: Download (580)

A couple of weeks ago, the management team here met for a day to try to distill into a few words what we think is responsible for our recent successes. After all, customers have plenty of other apparent alternatives, from both behemoth software companies as well as smaller competitors.

After much discussion, we think we know what’s going on: ActiveVOS is winning new customers because, simply, it’s the BPMS that development teams love.

With that phrase, we think we have described why we succeed in a competitive market in tough economic times. ActiveVOS simply does a better job of what the extended development team — business analysts and software engineers collaborating with end users — needs to do to implement integrated, end-to-end processes that include both human workflows and automated systems. (For a revealing look at the relationship between end-users and development teams, watch a replay of Sandy Kemsley debunking the “four myths” of end user process development.)

OK, I know how this must sound to you. It’s what you’d expect from the marketing department: a cheery, upbeat, sunny view of our product devoid of any technical content. But the truth is that enthusiasm for your BPM system — how “cool” it is, how easily you can get your processes modeled and deployed — makes a huge difference in the results and the organization’s ultimate satisfaction with their BPM efforts.

So, ask yourself how emotionally attached you think you could get to the BPMS you are evaluating. Think about the level of effort the salespeople have to go to get you to overlook the challenges of ease of use, integration and features for collaboration their products present. Count the number of times they had to take you to lunch to develop that “personal touch”  – really just a way to get you to bond to them instead of their BPMS.

We recommend instead that you skip the high-calorie lunch, download a supported trial of ActiveVOS, start a proof-of-concept, and find out for yourself why ActiveVOS is generating such a positive reaction in the BPMS marketplace.

We are pleased to post this episode of Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect Analyst Insight Edition episode 42. This time, Dana and his industry analyst panel discuss the impact of cloud computing and the need for governance in the cloud. It’s a very interesting topic and one you will want to hear these experts’ perspectives on.

In addition to the audio file, we have also posted a PDF transcript of the podcast, for your convenience.

 

 BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Podcast #42: Governance in cloud computing [44:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (3704)

 BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Podcast #42: Governance in cloud computing - transcript: Download (523)

I am very excited to post a replay of an exceptionally well-received webinar we first presented on June 3, 2009. In this webinar, noted analyst, blogger and consultant Sandy Kemsley joins us to present IT-Business Collaboration on BPM.

Sandy’s riveting presentation gets to the very core of a heated, on-going debate about business process management (BPM): Can business end users actually develop and deploy complex, integrated business processes using today’s business process management systems (BPMSs)? Will they? Even, should they?

You will hear Sandy discuss the “four myths of BPM,” namely:

• Myth #1: Users will use a BPMS to create executable process models
• Myth #2: Business users and analysts can create executable process models
• Myth #3 (My favorite!): Business users want to create executable business process models
• Myth #4: IT wants business end users to use a BPMS to create executable process models

I think you will find Sandy’s detailed discussion of these issues fascinating. And, after Sandy’s talk you can see how the ActiveVOS BPMS fits how things should be: a world in which development teams composed of IT and business analysts collaborate to create integrated, end-to-end, deployable process models.

Because of the very positive feedback we received from the attendees who attended the live webinar, I am posting multiple versions of the recording to ensure that you have the opportunity to watch it. In addition to the usual iPod-formatted .m4v file (140MB), this post also contains a 437MB DivX-encoded .avi file and a 94MB Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv file. Finally, for our bandwidth-challenged readers, I have also posted a PDF of Sandy’s PowerPoint slides. I strongly recommend that you download one of the recordings so you can fully appreciate the wisdom of Sandy’s presentation.

We welcome your feedback. If you’d like to discuss this topic on Twitter, please use the “#activevos” search term…we’ll join you in the discussion there. You can also follow us on Twitter here.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #33: BPMS, IT, business users and the real state of collaboration [77:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1304)

 VOSibilities podcast #33: BPMS, IT, business users and the real state of collaboration: Download (509)

 VOSibilities podcast #33: BPMS, IT, business users and the real state of collaboration [77:58m]: Download (476)

 VOSibilities podcast #33: BPMS, IT, business users and the real state of collaboration [77:58m]: Download (1197)