We are very pleased to announce that John Newton, CTO of Alfresco Software, will be our guest on CTO Tuesdays this week. Details are in the media advisory attached to this post. Register for the webinar at http://www.activevos.com/ctot
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 (187)
CTO Tuesdays #11: Structured and unstructured BPMN modeling [46:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (184)
CTO Tuesdays #11: Structured and unstructured BPMN modeling [46:14m]: Download (114)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 (143) VOSibilities podcast #41: ActiveVOS 7 and IBM Rational Requirements Composer: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (97) VOSibilities podcast #41: ActiveVOS 7 and IBM Rational Requirements Composer [75:46m]: Download (147)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 (155) CTO Tuesday #10 Using requirements gathering tools with a BPMS [41:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (128) CTO Tuesday #10 Using requirements gathering tools with a BPMS [41:01m]: Download (131)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 (197) 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 (112)
CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP: Download (112)In the last quarter of 2009, ActiveVOS sales grew rapidly. Details are in the attached press release.
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.
As those of you who follow us know, we’re very proud of the fact that ActiveVOS is built from the ground up on standards. We strongly believe that standards support is the entry price for any BPMS that hopes to change the way process applications are built and deployed.
Now, I am pleased to report that OASIS has announced that the WS-BPEL Extension for People (also known by its alliterative shorthand name, BPEL4People) 1.1 specification is available for public review. In addition, the companion specification, WS-HumanTask 1.1, is also available for public review. ActiveVOS 7 implements both WS-HumanTask and BPEL4People.
In short, these two standards marry automated processing with a vastly updated and more intelligent approach to human workflow that (finally!) makes including people in complex processes as easy as including any system task.
Consider the graphic above. Prior to WS-HumanTask (and BPEL4People), creating human tasks usually required interaction with a proprietary workflow system that didn’t necessarily integrate easily with the rest of the application architecture:
One of the motivations of WS-HumanTask was an increasingly important need to support the ability to allow any application to create human tasks in a service-oriented manner. Human tasks had traditionally been created by tightly-coupled workflow management systems (WFMS). In such environments the workflow management system managed the entirety of a task’s lifecycle, an approach that did not allow the means to directly affect a task’s lifecycle outside of the workflow management environment (other than for a human to actually carry out the task). Particularly significant was an inability to allow applications to create a human task in such tightly coupled environments.
This graphic neatly shows how these new standards separate — and standardize — the work items from the processing of those items. All in all, a huge step forward for a new generation of process apps.
When you do take a look at the specs, I hope you’ll notice the level of commitment Active Endpoints has made to developing and finalizing these standards. Two of our technical leaders, Luc Clément and Michael Rowley, are listed as editors for the drafts. They are helping make a lasting contribution to BPM through their efforts to bring these standards to market, in partnership with the other members of the OASIS Technical Committee.
Today, we are very pleased to announce another customer success story for ActiveVOS. Details are in the press release attached to this post.
This story is of particular note because we are showing ActiveVOS 7 this week at the Gartner BPM Summit. In this morning’s opening keynote, I listened as Janelle Hill and Jim Sinur described the benefits of BPM: speed, flexibility, responsiveness, business-owner-driven change, competitive advantage.
I was all smiles. See, I had the pleasure of interviewing the customer for this press release. As Janelle and Jim described the possibilities of BPM — how it can fundamentally change businesses — I remembered the interview with TheWatchery.Com and our excitement when they told us that ActiveVOS had allowed them to make millions of dollars overnight because they could change their processes so quickly. I think this story embodies much of what we are hearing about at the BPM Summit.
Today, Active Endpoints is announcing a success story that we believe demonstrates the flexibility and capability of ActiveVOS and also makes us proud of the way the product has been used. As you can see in the press release attached to this post, ActiveVOS is being used to implement the business processes necessary to implement smart electrical grids in Scandinavia.
Building a smart grid means changing many of the core things a utility does that involve customers. It’s nitty-gritty operations like ordering new meters…getting them installed…making sure billing systems can handle customers who sell energy back to the grid and/or are interruptible.
We are very excited that ActiveVOS is BPMS has been chosen to help the global effort to become more energy-smart.
BTW, ActiveVOS 7 is now available for download.
We are very pleased to announce ActiveVOS 7.0. The full press release is attached to this post. You might also be interested in seeing our new screenshot tours, browsing detail about the new release’s features and reading What’s New in ActiveVOS 7.0.
As most software companies do, we have been previewing the next release of our BPMS, ActiveVOS 7.0, to journalists, analysts and important bloggers. Last week, we had the pleasure of showing the new release to Dana Gardner, who has blogged about his impressions on zdnet.com.
Dana talks in his post about a “new Moore’s Law” in which the limits of silicon to deliver productivity have been reached. Instead, he envisions a wave of innovation in process applicaitons that, combined with continued advances in hardware, re-accelerate productivity:
This new…law declares that productivity today is better gained from improving business processes and the way human tasks and machines tasks are combined to rapidly improve results. Productivity needs to come from ongoing process innovation and refinement.
This is a very exciting idea…and we are pleased to be one of the ways to enable the next wave of process applications.
As has become something of a tradition here at Active Endpoints, I recently sat down with CTO Michael Rowley and Sr. Director of Products Luc Clément to talk about ActiveVOS 7.0 from the perspective of two of the people who have been heavily involved in the design and development of this major release.
ActiveVOS 7.0 is a major release of the BPMS and contains many new innovative capabilities. In fact, our discussion of the new BPMN 2.0 design canvas and our new AJAX forms design capability which allows humans to become services in an orchestration was so interesting that we decided to cover other new features in an additional podcast so as to not run too long in this one.
Michael, Luc and I will record a part 2 covering those features soon. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy this introduction to ActiveVOS 7.0 BPMN 2.0 design with BPEL execution and the discussion of how WS-HumanTask was implemented in an AJAX forms designer.
Update: As promised, we have posted part 2 of this discussion here.
VOSibilities podcast #37: ActiveVOS 7.0, part 1 [27:08m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1535)One of the hottest topics in enterprise computing today is the proper relationship between business users and IT. Our CEO, Mark Taber, blogged about one aspect of this important topic just yesterday. Also yesterday, Gartner’s Jim Sinur wrote a very compelling post asking additional questions about the proper relationship between IT and end users.
Today, we are pleased to make available a new white paper by well-known industry analyst Sandra Rogers which offers additional insight into this very question.
Here’s an excerpt from the paper:
Organizations are discovering that the use of more visual and self-documenting solutions can better ensure that requirements are commonly understood and agreed upon, and measure if certain business goals met. Utilizing BPMSs like ActiveVOS that help individuals capture current and future state, that are easier to use and allow for multiple and concurrent cycles while designing and enhancing business processes, can greatly impact overall results. The use of such technology that provides deeper transparency into one’s processes, enables the sharing of best practices, and allows business stakeholders building degrees of freedom in adjust application and process parameters can help bring all parties into further alignment.
We hope you enjoy Sandy’s paper.
Joe McKendrick has revisited the debate about the relationship of BPM and SOA by commenting on JP Morgenthal’s assertion that SOA and BPM initiatives should be kept separate.
With all due respect to JP, we think he’s got it wrong. BPM and SOA do need to be reconciled.
JP seems to have fallen into a trap that confuses the need to achieve two complimentary goals with the need to combine the initiatives that strive for those goals.
So sure, the initiative to introduce a business process culture into an organization should be separate from an initiative that drives toward a service-oriented architecture, but both initiatives have to be able to succeed. Those that merely view BPM as the killer application that justifies purchasing stacks of “SOA” middleware are missing the key “BPM” value proposition. Conversely, pure-play BPMers risk building impenetrable fortresses of locked in process that can’t be shared/reused.
In JP’s world, the benefits of BPM will not materialize for either the business which is trying to rationalize work or by the architecture groups trying to rationalize infrastructure supporting that work. In order for them both to succeed, any application that is developed with a BPMS must introduce its new functionality as a collection of services.
Implementing “BPM” does not suddenly provide an excuse to intertwine business logic with presentation logic. Reusable services must be created in order for the long-term success of the enterprise and its BPM initiatives. BPM must be inclusive – not a fiefdom.
Workflow, human interaction, reports, event processing — all need to be incorporated in a service-based architecture if we’re ever to get to better business (i.e. BPM) and IT (i.e. infrastructure) alignment. In other words, BPM itself needs to be service-oriented.
Without a major course correction in current BPM-SOA approaches (with BPM as a consumer of services only) the respective visions of BPM and SOA stakeholders will not materialize. A service-oriented BPM has a much better chance of yielding an outcome where BPM and SOA can actually share and deliver on a common vision. Claiming, as JP does, that SOA and BPM “are not – repeat not – related” gives the incorrect impression that people who are creating business processes don’t need to care about SOA and that people creating services don’t need to care about BPM.
Neither is true.
