VOSibilities

Well, I’m back from the long Memorial Day weekend (the weather here in the Boston area was spectacular for this traditional start-of-summer holiday). It was great to be offline for a few days, and this morning — like millions of other people just back into the office —  I’ve been plowing through the astonishing amount of email I collected over the long holiday.

In doing so, I came across an email that’s so indicative of the pain and suffering that is inflicted on developers by enterprise software companies that it completely jolted me back into the reality of what we’re trying to accomplish here with ActiveVOS. Before I post this message in its entirety — I’ve only removed names to protect the identity of my colleague who sent me the message — please let me set the stage a little.

When we were at JavaOne, SAP announced it’s ushering in a “new era in BPM“ (They can’t actually call it a product because, according to the release, you can’t buy it until, at best, ”early 2009″). A colleague and I sat through a presentation and demo, if you can call it that, of the new capabilities. The SAP presenter wasn’t able to get his screenshot demo — no live code — into screen show mode in PowerPoint. (I guess he hasn’t been to the five-day SAP employee class Introduction to F5 in Microsoft PowerPoint yet.) It was one of the worst demos I’ve ever seen. Or, maybe, it was one of the best demos I’ve ever seen. Depends on your perspective.

A DVD was distributed, which my colleague — being more technical than I am — laid claim to. What follows are his emails to me from last week that I just read this morning: 

Okay, Alex, I’ve spent most of today trying to install the SAP NetWeaver product, and so far have had several failures on the install and am not sure how to proceed. I will continue searching their install forums and so on, and maybe trying other options in their install dialogs, but I am sick of blowing time on it.

How would you like me to proceed? Would you prefer I sent you up the DVD to let you play with it for a while? [Uh....no. - ed.] If you get it installed, you could send it back, and I could try again, but maybe you’d like to get your hands on it for a while. [Yeah, right...I want to sign up to be this frustrated. - ed.] Certainly, if you have as many troubles as I did, your blog entry could consist of documenting the install difficulties alone! [And here it is. - ed.]

I found recommendations on the SAP support forum for this installer to install the demo on a VM image instead of on your actual machine, because the install can fail and screw up your registry etc. The normal enterprise “I need to do this to run my mega-app, so get out of my way and let me do anything I want on your machine, and no, I don’t play well with others” crap… Of course, my machine isn’t really powerful enough to install to a VMWare image rather than my machine, so I haven’t tried that path. Besides, I have several partially completed installs already started on my machine, so it isn’t clean any more anyway.

Then, a day later, this update:

As expected, when I came in today, the SAP installer I left up overnight was still reporting it was processing step 18 of 30 install steps. I also notice a performance issue on my machine now – I’ve stopped any autostart services SAP installed, but I have to go through and thoroughly cleanse my machine from their shite as well. I still have the DVD – I might try again over the next week or so to do the install, but it is not top of my list… 

Rightfully so. I can’t imagine it’d be at the top of any developer’s list of things to do. From the concept, to the “demo” to the user’s out-of-box experience, it’s becoming pretty clear that SAP’s BPM initiative started with wheels that have some real issues, like not being round.

In our latest podcast episode, Mark Taber, CEO of Active Endpoints, discusses the relationship between BPEL and BPMN and why BPEL is the standards-based environment of choice for executing services-based applications. Mark also describes how BPMN can free users from the tyranny of proprietarty BPMS execution and, best of all, previews what Active Endpoints will be doing shortly in ActiveVOS to unite these two useful standards. Mark also discusses at a high level how we see the relationship between BPEL and BPMN and what we believe a visual orchestration system should enable users interested in these technologies to accomplish.

We hope you enjoy this podcast. We welcome feedback as a comment on the blog or via email to editor@activevos.com.

 

 VOSibilities podcast # 7: Mark Taber on BPMN and BPEL [9:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (117)

OK, at risk of obscuring my passionate post of earlier today about BPMN, BPEL and BPEL4People, it’s about time that we posted the pix of us at JavaOne. It’s taken a whole week because the Flickr plugin I tried earlier this week crashed the blog completely.

Anyway, I was motivated to do this this afternoon because our guys are calling everyone whom we met at JavaOne to follow-up. And just a few minutes ago, Mike Kettering came in to tell me a woman he spoke with had a great time at the party. It was so nice of her to tell Mike that she’d had a good time so long after the party ended.

Frankly, I don’t remember the party very well, but I know I had a blast. (-:

Just click on a thumbnail to see the photos from Flickr. Those big yellow bowls were actually lighted, though you can’t see it in the photos. And most of the other shots showing people palming big snifters are of people enjoying a 40oz cocktail masterpiece.

So, next time we invite you to a pahty, you’re gonna come, right?

I’ve been waiting to post this video podcast episode for a couple of weeks because I wanted to understand better all the vitriol and confusion in the marketplace between BPMN promoters on one side and BPEL proponents on the other

No less an authority than Bruce Silver noted over two years ago “…that the world of BPMS is divided into BPEL-lovers and BPEL-haters…” And as soon as I arrived at Active Endpoints last January, I could really feel the tension…an internecine battle among people who believe in the same outcome and passionately hold that standards-based technology is ultimately the correct path for customers.

But at the end of the day, there are two inescapable facts. First, BPMN is not executable. BPEL is. Together, they are a more potent, winning combination for customers than peanut butter and jelly. I just can’t understand why BPMN promoters skip over this fact.

This BPMN-bigot blind-spot this allows Lombardi, SAP and others to claim ”support” for standards and yet execute the processes on a proprietary execution engine. Isn’t that the maximum possible deprecation of BPMN? Isn’t it a violation of the original intent of BPMN to run it on proprietary engines, ensuring customers lose agility and increasing their costs? Why don’t BPMN people just loathe that idea?

We do, and that’s the second inescapable fact: no modelling-direct-to-execution technology has ever succeeded. That’s why BPEL4People is so important (and why we are on the BPEL4People Technical Committee and have implemented the current capabilities of BPEL4People in ActiveVOS 5).

It’s really pretty simple (and here comes a mixed metaphor I can’t believe I’m posting): dolphins don’t talk but old dogs can be taught new tricks. Dolphins may actually be smarter than humans, but they don’t speak in words. BPMN may be great, but it won’t run “on the metal.” OTOH, BPEL can be extended with human activities that are first-class participants in a BPEL orchestration. That ole dog sure can hunt.

Bottom line: BPEL and BPMN together is what kumbaya sounds like for BPMS. And today’s podcast episode is a proof point: watch how Mark Ford shows an orchestration that includes human workflow as a first-class participant and which is 100% standards-based. (And watch for us to shortly say a whole lot more about ActiveVOS and BPMS.)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #6: Mark Ford on BPEL4People [2:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (339)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #6: Mark Ford on BPEL4People [2:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (35)

Whew…it’s been a busy week. We were at JavaOne, threw a great party (pix soon, I promise), met lots of people and got lots of great feedback.

Oh, and speaking of parties, we crashed SAPPHIRE in Orlando. Yes, it was we who dressed up actors in prison uniforms labelled “SAP County Jail” on the back and had the actors hand out ActiveVOS demo CD’s labelled “SAP Liberation Plan” and “Evidence” during SAP’s big user convention last week.

Why? In two words: public service. SAP bigots may think that’s an over-the-top characterization of what they will label as a PR stunt. But there is a method to our madness. We are convinced that SAP is pulling the wool over users’ eyes about BPM. And while we are realistic about our chances of liberating today’s SAP users, we feel compelled to reach out to them just in case they want a get-out-of-proprietary-BPM-jail plan.

What am I talking about? Consider this interview with an SAP architect who says:

SAP NetWeaver already provides capabilities to model and execute business processes that include both automated activities as well as human-executed activities. As the BPEL4People standardization progresses we will presumably see more and more compliant implementations.

Isn’t it clever to conflate NetWeaver — the most closed, proprietary BPMS on the planet — with BPEL4People? If you can just get a little of that standards-based branding onto your proprietary platform (especially in an press interview about standards), it may be enough to keep the prisoners in lock-down and maybe even bring a new busload or two inside the gates.

By “…we will presumably see more and more compliant implementations” I presume SAP was referring to the announcement last week of SAP’s plans for BPM, in which they purport to “usher in a new era” in BPM. The interview was published before the press release was issued, but if this is what she was referring to, it looks like NetWeaver users looking to free their business processes from proprietary stacks have just had their jail sentences unilaterally extended.

Consider three points. FIrst, there’s not a single standard mentioned in this press release. That’s not ushering in a new era. That’s 1980 all over again. Second, notice the repeated use of the phrase “the planned implementation.” This is all about some SAP NetWeaver product you can’t actually get until Q1 2009. Can you say, “freeze-dry the prisoners until we’re ready?” Third, I fell asleep during a demo of this at JavaOne in which the demoer couldn’t even get a PowerPoint to work.

‘Nuff said (for now). Be sure to watch the hilarious video of our “prisoners” being harassed in Orlando as they attempt to hand out CD’s to arriving guests. We didn’t go inside the hall. We didn’t interfere with anyone…but SAP set the security people on us anyway. Guess a little standards-based competition is too much for the self-proclaimed ushers of a new era.

 

 Video of Active Endpoints attempting to liberate SAP users at SAPPHIRE [2:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (394)

We are pleased to offer our first audio podcast. Until now, we’ve used our podcast feed to offer videos, webinar replays and news about Active Endpoints in PDF form.

Now, we are going to a more “classic” use of our podcast feed by providing audio interviews with the people inside Active Endpoints who are driving our product and market efforts. I hope to offer regular podcasts that span the gamut of topics: from marketing to technology with everything in between.

Enjoy this inaugural episode with Chris Keller, a founder of Active Endpoints, who I stuck in the “Wayback Machine” and asked a couple of tough historical questions. First, “Why BPEL”? And second, “What lead to the requirement for BPEL4People and WS-Human Task”?

 

 VOSibilities podcast #4: Chris Keller on Active Endpoints, BPEL and BPEL4People [14:20m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (169)

View a recording of the April 17, 2008 webinar BPEL Basics for Java Developers, presented by Active Endpoints’ Ron Romano and Alex Neihaus. This webinar was extraordinarily well-received and offers Java developers a conceptual introduction to SOA-based service orchestration using familar concepts.

There are two files in this post. The first file is formatted for an iPod and can be viewed here on the blog. Please be patient while the podcast downloads into the player. It is also available in our podcast feed (search on “vosibilities” in the iTunes Store to subscribe).

The second, a DivX-encoded AVI file, is significantly larger in size (@460MB) and can be downloaded for more comfortable viewing.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #3: BPEL Basics for Java Developers webinar April 17 2008 (iPod format) [91:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (782)
 VOSibilities podcast #3: BPEL Basics for Java Developers webinar April 17 2008 (DivX-encoded AVI) [91:49m]: Download (436)

I was reading Frank Cohen’s blog today (he was nice enough to help get the word out about our webinar on Java and BPEL this coming Thursday) and I ran across this very interesting comment Frank made after having attended a Java conference recently:

Java architects and developers are frustrated looking for Business Process Management (BPM) standards and tools. Brian Sletten’s talk…was titled “Avoiding ESBs” but could have been better described as “I’m sick and tired of waiting for vendors to give me a decent Business Process Management (BPM) platform!”

Here in VOSville, we think one of the mega VOSibilities (that’s posibilities for those of you who are already tired of my lame puns) that exists in the marketplace is at the junction of visual orchestration systems and BPM. I know, I know, this ain’t very specific. But, I can’t say anything more at the moment.

Let me just say that we are cooking up sumthin’ very special that will answer this precise criticism. And, I promise, you won’t have to wait long to see the water (and our competitors’ blood) boil.

But, you do have to wait. While you do, Frank was kind enough to send over information on a bootcamp his company is holding. Here’re the details. You should check it out.

Frank Cohen and Robert Schneider are putting on their Open-Source Test Automation Bootcamp, a 3-Day Hands-On Course, in Philadelphia on May 14-16, 2008. Companies such as AMD, Amazon, TV Guide, Ford, and The Jackson Labs sent their testers, architects, and managers to learn Frank and Rob’s test methodology, test patterns, and best practices. Plus they received hands-on training with free open-source test tools, including soapUI, Selenium, and PushToTest.

The Bootcamp delivers hands-on training to test Web applications, Web services, Ajax, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), and REST applications to optimize these for performance, reliability, and proper function. The Seminar teaches practical methodology and techniques to surface performance bottlenecks and optimizations to improve scalability and throughput.

Bootcamp instructors Frank Cohen and Robert Schneider are the leading authorities and teachers for testing and optimizing software developed with Web, SOA, AJAX, and REST designs and implementations.

Details can be found at http://bootcamp.pushtotest.com

Active Endpoints today announced the Java Advancement Kit, a set of education, training and products that will enable Java developers to take the next step in their professional advancement by quickly and easily using web services to create compelling service orchestrations.

 Active Endpoints Announces the Java Advancement Kit: Download (258)

Please join us for an informative webinar on April 17 entitled BPEL Basics for Java Developers. Register here.

This informative webinar will help you expand your Java knowledge to acquire an understanding of the basics of BPEL. A high-level overview of BPEL and its importance in a web-services environment will be presented, along with a brief discussion of the basic BPEL activities and how they relate to Java concepts. The following topics will be covered:
• Parsing the Language of SOA with Java as a guide
• Breaking out of the VM: evolving from RPC to Web Services
• BPEL Activities - Receive, Reply, Invoke • BPEL Facilities - Fault Handling and Compensation (“Undo”)

We hope you can join us.

Try as I might, I can’t find a single line of source code in the download of Intalio’s Community Edition ”open source BPMS.” Imagine my surprise at this considering they have been claiming open source leadership for years. They even call themselves “the leading Open Source BPMS company.” Sure, you can find source code for individual piece parts if you go to another website and find it as part of Intalio’s donations to open source projects, but here I am talking about their claims of open source leadership in regards to their Community Edition product.

Because of the complexity of enterprise software, I believe software companies have to hold themselves to a higher level of “truth in labelling.” We don’t like it when toothpaste has antifreeze in it. And I don’t like it when an purportedly open source product has no source and licensing restrictions that sound like they were written in Redmond or Walldorf.

It may be simplistic but calling something “open source” means you get source code. While Sandy Kemsley finds it amusing when I quote Wikipedia, the simple fact is that Wikipedia’s definition of FOSS says open source allows users to “…study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code” (emphasis mine). To call yourself the “open source leader” and to launch an “open source service” (whatever that is) means you should conform to the conventional definition of what FOSS is. And that ain’t what Intalio is doing, near as I can tell.

I was recently fact-checking an upcoming analyst report on BPMS in which the author mentioned in passing that Intalio didn’t actually include source in its Community Edition downloads. I was dumbfounded (and more than a little miffed that these analysts could so blithely give these guys a pass on so fundamental a point).

Incredulous, I asked our product management people to take a look. As willing as I am to call Intalio out for misleading users about its Community Edition, I am still not willing to cut and paste the heated analysis I got back from the product managers. So, let me try to summarize:

• As far as we can tell, the license included with their product includes the restriction that users may not “…decompile, disassemble, or otherwise reverse engineer or attempt to reconstruct or discover any source code or underlying ideas or algorithms of the Intalio Software by any means whatsoever…” (again, emphasis mine)
• As far back as 2006, Intalio was happy allow confusion between “open source-like” and real open source in its licensing to morph into “open source leadership.” (Here, you have to knock Gartner for not being more consistent and giving Intalio the room to claim open source street cred undeservedly.)
• At the end of the day, Intalio’s claim of an open source mantle isn’t about standards or FOSS, it’s about its sales model.

It’s that last point that I really object to. It’s OK to be proprietary. It’s OK not to ship the source code. What’s not OK is to use the terminology of standards and open source to confuse users for the (very legitimate) purpose of driving sales. That’s just misleading.

A fascinating post on the Inside Architecture blog lambastes SOA tools for creating JaBoWS (just another bunch of web services).

Nick Malik writes:

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hate tools. For one thing, there are some tools that support Enterprise SOA. Not many, but a few. Those tools understand that Enterprise SOA is not about building one service after another, but building the right services, and building them in a manageable and non-overlapping way.

Nick goes on to say that companies that companies that do not implement a “comprehensive Enterprise SOA transformational program” end up with “tripe.”

Have you ever violently agreed with some one’s conclusions but disagreed as violently with the premise? Well, that’s where we find ourselves after reading Nick’s very passionate (and well-written) post.

In short, when you build a SOA up of piece parts, you would tend to believe that service orchestrations — the actual applications — can be built from piece parts. And they just can’t. What’s good for the architecture isn’t good for the developer.

Developers — especially Java types who are creating web services willy-nilly and then running into a wall trying to use them — need something both familiar and holistic to actually get some value from those web services. They need a visual orchestration system which is complete, standards-based and familiar. Something that masks the complexity of long-running transactions, includes human tasks, eliminates hand-coding of XML, offers discovery of available services and, above all, makes testing and deploying services-based apps easy.

ActiveVOS can do all that, and more. Yet some people call us a “tool.” (I’d prefer SOA development system, but at the end of the day, if you are the tripe-buster, what do you care what people call you?)

Nick is exactly correct that the tools people have been using before VOSs yield little but JaBoWS. As long as developers have to put all the pieces together, you can’t get anything else. But there’s magic in making SOA development integrated and familiar.

Don’t blame the tools. Instead blame those who become captives of their own thinking, by extending the assumptions they made in building their SOA to the development of applications to run in that SOA.

Anne Thomas Mannes of the Burton Group has recently written a post that sums up what I believe is the missing in the discussion of SOA and BPM: the enormous challenge in getting line-of-business developer teams to use these techniques.

Anne writes:

I’ve talked to many companies that have implemented stunningly beautiful SOA infrastructures that support managed communications using virtualized proxies and dynamic bindings. They’ve deployed the best technology the industry has to offer — including registries, repositories, SOA management, XML gateways, and even the occasional ESB. Many have set up knowledge bases, best practices, guidance frameworks, and governance processes. And yet these SOA initiatives invariably stall out. The techies just can’t sell SOA to the business. They have yet to demonstrate how all this infrastructure yields any business value.

More to the point, the techies have not been able to explain to the business units why they should adopt a better attitude about sharing and collaboration–which is the fundamental cultural shift required for SOA to succeed. The pervasive attitude is “What’s in it for me?” As one of my interviewees said, “Altruism is not an enterprise strategy”.

Many Americans will remember former President Clinton’s famous prescription for political success in the 1992 presidential campaign: “It’s the economy, stupid.” In a single sound bite, Clinton moved beyond technical discussions of monetary and fiscal policy to the heart of the matter: people cared then, as now in a period of economic turmoil, about bread-and-butter issues.

The challenge of SOA and BPM in business today is that it’s all been high-falutin’ theory. And lots — lots — of money spent on piece parts that look good on architecture diagrams but which are unimplementable by mere mortals in line of business development project teams.

It’s no wonder these “stunningly beautiful SOA infrastructures” cannot be “sold” to the business. By themselves, they do do nothing. Squat, nichts, nada. It takes developers to make these investments pay back for the business and those guys are too smart to sign up for science projects when they get paid to do business applications.

Those who care about SOA and BPM and making it real should take Anne’s advice and stop navel-gazing at their lovely accomplishments. The discussion needs to turn to how to enable real developers to use SOA effectively.

To anyone reading this blog, it’ll come as no surprise that we are quite sure we have the answer. That’s why we created a new category, the visual orchestration system, and a new product, ActiveVOS, specifically for line of business application developers.

It’s a tall claim, but we have the stuff to prove it. (It’s also why we took the unusual step of putting a top-level menu on our new website called “Proof“.) ActiveVOS is all about the application, stupid. And it’s about ending the habit of peeling money off the roll simply to build beautiful architectures nobody can use.

 I’ve been saving this episode’s video for the release of ActiveVOS 5.0. In this podcast, Mike Pellegrini, our chief architect, white boards the revolutionary concepts behind the new scenario testing and remote debugging capabilities in ActiveVOS 5.0.

Now that we have shipped ActiveVOS 5.0, I think episode becomes much more powerful because you can actually request an evaluation and try this for yourself. I’ve seen demonstrations of these new capabilities and I can tell you that if I were working in a SOA or BPM environment, this is precisely what I would want. Testing message-based, loosely coupled applications made of up black boxes isn’t an easy thing to even think about, much less achieve.

Or at least it wasn’t until we shipped ActiveVOS 5.0. (Those of you reading this post on our blog can click the image above to see a screenshot of some of these amazing new features.)

We hope you enjoy Mike’s chalk-talk.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #2: Mike Pelligrini on scenario testing in SOA applications [4:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (410)