VOSibilities

Attached to this post is a replay of a webinar we recently presented with our UK partner, T-Impact. T-Impact has deep expertise in BPM in industries like telecom. In this webinar, they detail their approach to BPM and how they use ActiveVOS to deliver process applications for their clients.

There are three formats attached to this post. First, an iPod touch/iPhone-formatted .m4v. We also have a Flash file that can be streamed from the blog and a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv.

 VOSibilities podcast #45: An introduction to T-Impact [65:25m]: Download (65)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #45: An introduction to T-Impact [65:23m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (49)
 VOSibilities podcast #45: An introduction to T-Impact [65:30m]: Download (15)

OK, I know…the title “preventing problems through static analysis” doesn’t exactly make you want to spend 40 minutes watching the replay of episode #14 of our weekly tech talk on BPMS technology.

But you’d be missing a really interesting and, dare I say it, fun topic. Trust me.

This week Michael Rowley tackles bugs in BPMSs. Bugs are just a part of life when creating business applications. But what about when you are creating process applications using a model-based BPMS? What happens then? How does the BPMS help you identify — even prevent and eliminate — bugs? Watch this episode to find out how standards like BPMN 2.0 and BPEL work together to help make designing and executing process applications more error-free.

As always, we have three formats of the podcast posted. There’s an iPod touch/iPhone .m4v; a Flash file that can be streamed from the blog and a Windows Media 9 .wmv.

 CTO Tuesdays #14: Preventing problems through static analysis of business processes [37:12m]: Download (89)

 

 CTO Tuesdays #14: Preventing problems through static analysis of business processes [37:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (69)
 CTO Tuesdays #14: Preventing problems through static analysis of business processes [37:17m]: Download (48)

BPMN 2.0 is a hot topic. From documenting processes to creating executable process models that combine system and human tasks, BPMN is on everyone’s lips.

But what is the state of BPMN 2.0 usage in the real world? This webinar, originally broadcast on February 18, 2010, offers some answers.

The bottom line? BPMN 2.0 usage is gaining traction — it’s becoming the modeling notation of choice for everything from documentation to creating executable process applications. If you are interested in what BPMN can do for you, you will want to watch this webinar replay to learn more about BPMN and how people are using it today. Watch Sandy Kemsley show you how not to create BPMN models as she parades models from the “BPMN modeling hall of shame.” And you can also watch as Michael Rowley shows you how to make BPMN executable with BPEL. At the end of the webinar is a very stimulating Q&A in which Kemsley and Rowley discuss the future of the BPMN specification and answer attendees’ questions.

A variety of formats are attached to this post, including a Flash format that can be streamed from the blog. Also, the slides Sandy and Michael presented are available in PDF form.

 VOSibilities podcast #44: The state of BPMN: an update from the real world [87:30m]: Download (169)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #44: The state of BPMN: an update from the real world [87:27m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (244)
 VOSibilities podcast #44: The state of BPMN: an update from the real world [87:36m]: Download (107)
 VOSibilities podcast #44: The state of BPMN: an update from the real world: Download (137)

There’s peanut butter and jelly. Noodles and chopsticks. Ducks and water. All perfect together…even made for each other.

That’s how we feel about business process management systems (BPMS) and enterprise content management systems (ECM). These two important technologies are made for each other.

If you have an important business process you want to automate, it’s likely to have people, processes and documents that all need to work together. And, you are likely to want everything to work together based on open, industry-wide standards. We’d go so far as to say, it’s an absolute requirement that the BPMS and ECM be totally based on standards.

That’s what Alfresco and ActiveVOS offer together. The best capabilities; the most openness.

Watch the replay of this webinar — and the absolutely brilliant demo of ActiveVOS BPMS and Alfresco ECM working together — to see how you can quickly, easily and compatibly produce better process applications for your organization.

There are three formats attached to this post, along with a PDF of the slides presented in the webinar. First is an iPod touch/iPhone-formatted .m4v. Second, a Flash .flv file that can be downloaded or played from the blog. Third, a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv is available.

We hope you enjoy this introduction to combining BPM and ECM technologies.

 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications [62:55m]: Download (97)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications [62:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (211)
 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications [62:55m]: Download (79)
 VOSibilities podcast #43: Combining BPMS and ECM for better process applications: Download (91)

Sandy Kemsley commented on the XPDL 2.2 effort to support the interchange of BPMN 2.0 model. I agree with her that it is a good thing. It will be a while before the BPMN 2.0 interchange formats are completed and even longer (if ever) before enough vendors support import and export of the format for it to be the lingua-franca of process models.

XPDL 2.1 is already supported by many tools, including ActiveVOS, so extending XPDL to support the new constructs in BPMN 2.0 will provide the fastest path for most vendors to achieve some level of interoperability of their BPMN 2.0 models.

Nonetheless, I’ve found that most people who have asked Active Endpoints about model import/export formats have been people who have the wrong idea of how to work with a BPMS. These are people who are trying to hold on to their old waterfall methodology for building software, where there are separate tools for building process models during analysis from the development tools that are later used to create the software. In that world, there is a constant need to translate back and forth between the tools as changes may occur on either side.

And there’s the rub. The roundtrip translation always loses so much information that the effort to keep the separate representations in sync and accurate outweighs the value of using the automatic export / import functionality. Eventually, changes made on the analysis side get redone on the implementation side by hand, and vice versa.

The right way to work is to let the BPMS own the model. Yes, you may want to allow early requirements gathering to use simpler modeling tools, but those tend to be fairly informal flow charts anyway. Once you get involved in real modeling you should use the modeling capabilities of your BPMS. By “real modeling”, I mean that you are at the stage where the precise semantics of the notation used is important, since it is going to drive the actual semantics of the resulting software.

In the early phases, the process models are diagrams where the labels on the diagram are what really matter. For example, the arrows coming out of an activity might formally imply that both directions can be followed at once, but the labels on the arrows have labels that imply that one one of them will happen. This is OK during the early stages of modeling, since it is another human who is going to be reading the model and they can guess what was really meant (or they can ask, if they aren’t sure).

Once you are ready to do real modeling, it is time to get the BPMS involved. That way the process model you create will go the rest of the way through the lifecycle of the project without need for translation, much less round-trip translation. How you get from the informal stage to the formal stage of process modeling isn’t really all that important. Yes, you can use XPDL 2.1, but it doesn’t really even matter if you have to redraw it from scratch. Drawing it is very fast in a capable designer like ActiveVOS, and the person doing the modeling is already going to have to be carefully considering each jot and tiddle of the original diagram to determine how to correctly model what the user really wanted to begin with.

This episode of CTO Tuesdays features our first guest CTO. John Newton, CTO and chairman of Alfresco Software, joins Michael Rowley to discuss how enterprise content management systems (ECM) can be combined with business process management systems (BPMS) to create compelling end-to-end business applications. ActiveVOS and Alfresco implement the new Content Management Interoperability Standard (CMIS), enabling these two important technologies to work together to produce a new generation of business process applications.

Attached to this post are three versions of the webinar. First is an iPod-formatted .m4v file. Second, a Flash .flv. Third, we have attached a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv. Finally, we have also attached a PDF of the presentation John delivered.

We hope you enjoy this episode of CTO Tuesdays. We hope, over time, to have additional guest CTOs on the podcast to talk about complementary technologies. And we’d love to hear your suggestions for topics as well as your comments and feedback.

 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together [47:22m]: Download (157)

 

 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (173)
 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together [47:28m]: Download (80)
 CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together: Download (76)

On this episode of CTO Tuesdays, we explore an important concept in software modeling: structured vs. unstructured modelers. Examples of both types are compared and contrasted. Also, the ActiveVOS BPMN 2.0 modeler, which blends the best of both types of modelers is demonstrated.

Three versions of the webinar are attached to this post: an iPod-formatted .m4v file, a Flash .flv file and a Windows Media 9-formatted .wmv.

 CTO Tuesdays #11: Structured and unstructured BPMN modeling [46:13m]: Download (179)

 

 CTO Tuesdays #11: Structured and unstructured BPMN modeling [46:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (177)
 CTO Tuesdays #11: Structured and unstructured BPMN modeling [46:14m]: Download (109)

We are pleased to make available a recording of a webinar originally presented on January 13, 2010 with Andy Berner of IBM and Michael Rowley of Active Endpoints. This webinar shows how business process modeling suites (BPMS) can be used with requirements gathering tools to support the entire lifecycle of a business process.

There are three formats available. First, an iPod-formatted .m4v. Second, a Flash .flv file which can be streamed directly from the blog or downloaded. Third, a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv. The .wmv file is about 55MB in size; the other two are about 96MB.

Please feel free to request an evaluation of ActiveVOS to begin to apply what you see and learn in this webinar to your business processes.

 VOSibilities podcast #41: ActiveVOS 7 and IBM Rational Requirements Composer [75:46m]: Download (137)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #41: ActiveVOS 7 and IBM Rational Requirements Composer: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (93)
 VOSibilities podcast #41: ActiveVOS 7 and IBM Rational Requirements Composer [75:46m]: Download (143)

Every Wednesday at noon ET, 17:00 UTC, we present a live webinar followed by a Q&A with our product manager, Mike Moniz, that takes a look at the features of ActiveVOS BPMS. You can always register for the upcoming webinar here.

However, we realize that this is a very inconvenient time for people in Asia-Pacific and some other time zones. So, we occasionally record the most recent webinar and post it to the blog. Attached to this post are three versions of the same recording. One, a .m4v file, is intended for iPod touch/iPhone users and is also available in our podcast feed. Second is a Flash .flv file (which can also be played directly on the blog). Finally, there’s an Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv. These files are large, because the webinar lasted over an hour. But the content is worth the download time.

 VOSibilities podcast #40: ActiveVOS 7 demonstration [77:31m]: Download (357)

 

 VOSibilities podcast #40: ActiveVOS 7 demonstration: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (210)
 VOSibilities podcast #40: ActiveVOS 7 demonstration [75:07m]: Download (128)

This week, Michael Rowley presented “Using requirements gathering tools with a BPMS,” an interesting look at the relationship — and the possibilities — of using model-based BPMSs with requirements gathering tools.

We have posted three formats of the webinar replay. First is an iPod-formatted .m4v file. Also, a Flash file that can be played from the blog and/or downloaded. Finally, we have included a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv file.

Please join us every week at noon ET, 9am PT and 17:00 GMT for CTO Tuesdays.

 CTO Tuesday #10 Using requirements gathering tools with a BPMS [40:59m]: Download (148)

 

 CTO Tuesday #10 Using requirements gathering tools with a BPMS [41:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (126)
 CTO Tuesday #10 Using requirements gathering tools with a BPMS [41:01m]: Download (126)

CTO Tuesdays is back for 2010!

In our first episode of the new year, Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley covers some basic theory of how complex event processing (CEP) works and makes the case for integrating a CEP engine directly into the BPM engine. Topics covered include the Event Processing Language (EPL), time windows as a method of correlating disparate events and event streams. In short, a fascinating — and accessible — introduction to a hot technical topic.

We have attached several formats of the webinar replay to this post. First, for iTunes subscribers, we have a .m4v file, perfect for taking along on your iPod. RSS feed subscribers will automatically receive this file. Also, there’s a .flv file which can be played directly on the blog (click where it says “click here” to play it). Also, we have attached a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv file. Finally, the slides Michael presented are attached as a .pdf.

Be sure to join us live every Tuesday at noon ET, 9am PT, 17:00 UTC for a new topic. You can always register for the upcoming CTO Tuesdays webinar at http://www.activevos.com/ctot. Replays are usually posted here on our blog within 48 hours.

We have an exciting agenda of upcoming episodes, and later in the first part of Q1, we hope to guest CTOs join us for their perspectives on technical topics. We hope you will join us live each week.

 CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP [42:59m]: Download (188)

 

 CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP [43:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1)
 CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP [43:15m]: Download (103)
 CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP: Download (97)

In the last quarter of 2009, ActiveVOS sales grew rapidly. Details are in the attached press release.

 ActiveVOS Experiences Rapid Sales Growth in Q4 2009: Download (370)

We are pleased to make available content from the eighth episode of our weekly technical webinar CTO Tuesdays.

In this episode, Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley gives what might be the most concise, “digestable” overview of BPMN 2.0 available on the Web. If you are new to BPMN and want to see what it can do for you and your organization, this content is for you. In this webinar, Rowley discusses basic BPMN notation, including activities, events and gateways. And, in an expansive Q&A following the presentation, Rowley answers questions about the use and capabilities of BPMN.

There are four attachments contained in this post. First, an iPod-formatted .m4v recording of the webinar. This is for subscribers to the podcast in iTunes (search on “vosibilities”). Next, is a Flash .flv file which is intended to stream from the blog, though at the small size I have to limit the player to on the blog (416×312), it’s not the best experience. The .flv file itself is at 640×480, so feel free to download it if you want to play it locally. Next we have the original-sized Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv file. Finally, a PDF of the slides Rowley presented are attached.

We hope you find this content useful. You can always access the replays of CTO Tuesdays here on our blog, www.vosibilities.com in the “CTO Tuesdays” category, in our podcast on iTunes and via www.ctotuesdays.com or, for an RSS feed, www.ctotuesdays.com/feed. We’re trying to make it easy to find and use this content, so if there’s a method you prefer we haven’t accounted for, please let us know.

CTO Tuesdays will return to our every-Tuesday-at-noon-ET schedule in early January, 2010.  Next year we have some exciting additions planned, including guest appearances of CTOs from other leading technology companies. Make sure you sign up to attend every week. You can always sign up for the next episode at www.activevos.com/ctot.

Finally, in answer to a question we had in the Q&A, here’s a link to the OMG specification for BPMN 2.0. In Annex A of this document, you can find the differences between BPMN 1.2 and BPMN 2.0.

 CTO Tuesdays #8: An Introduction to BPMN [61:06m]: Download (377)

 

 CTO Tuesdays #8: An Introduction to BPMN [61:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (581)
 CTO Tuesdays #8: An Introduction to BPMN [61:06m]: Download (264)
 CTO Tuesdays #8: An Introduction to BPMN: Download (255)

Attached to this post is a reply of the December 8, 2009 edition of CTO Tuesdays. CTOT is a weekly webinar presented by Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley which presents a technical topic of interest to BPM users. CTOT discusses the “how” and “why” of technologies like BPMN and BPEL at a detailed technical level and is of interest to enterprise architects, developers and managers who want to understand the latest in BPM technology.

This episode takes a look at how it is possible to meld the “Wild West” control flow of BPMN 2.0 with the more buttoned-down control flow of BPEL. Rowley gives an example of a BPEL extension that effectively marries these two standards in a way that preserves the best of both BPMN modeling and BPEL execution.

There are two versions of the webinar replay file attached. First is an iPod-formatted .m4v. Also available is a Windows Media 9-encoded .wmv file.

You can always register for the upcoming CTO Tuesdays webinar at http://www.activevos.com/ctot. Registration is free. Access replays on the Wednesday following the webinar at http://www.ctotuesdays.com or via RSS feed at http://www.ctotuesdays.com/feed.

Be sure to join us next Tuesday, December 15, 2009 at noon ET, 17:00 UTC, 9am PT for a very special CTO Tuesdays in which Michael Rowley will deliver an introduction to BPMN 2.0. If you are interested in BPM and BPMS technology, you won’t want to miss this episode.

 CTO Tuesdays #7: Adding Looping Links to BPEL [45:01m]: Download (385)
 CTO Tuesdays #7: Adding Looping Links to BPEL [45:01m]: Download (248)

Frequent visitors to our blog (and we hope you become one) will have already that we are in the middle of a fascinating discussion on the question of execution engines. Now, Rob Barry of searchSOA.com has weighed in with this post.

We welcome your comments and feedback on this topic.

Also, we would also like to invite you to our weekly webinar CTO Tuesdays. Every Tuesday at noon ET, 17:00 UTC, Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley discusses a single technical topic in 30 minutes, followed by a Q&A from the audience. In the recent past, we’ve covered topics like the BPMN 2.0 diamond control flow and engine-managed execution. Our most recent webinar delved into the the issues of dead path detection in BPEL and how to model in BPMN 2.0 to avoid duplicate activity execution.

You can always find the replays of the webinars on this blog in the “CTO Tuesdays” category (RSS feed here). Registration for the next CTO Tuesdays webinar is always available here.