VOSibilities

We are pleased to make available a newly published analysis of ActiveVOS written by Neil Ward-Dutton of MWD Advisors.

We are especially excited that Neil chose to focus on the integration of complex event processing (CEP) into ActiveVOS. This report describes how powerful the combination of BPM and CEP can be and makes a point we have long asserted: that CEP shouldn’t be a separate thing. Instead, it should be integrated into the core of the BPMS.

 MWD Vendor Insight on ActiveVOS: Download (356)

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 [43:00m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1)

 CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP [43:15m]: Download (225)

 CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP [42:59m]: Download (451)

 CTO Tuesdays #9: BPM as an event source for CEP: Download (232)

ActiveVOS 7.0 is a major new release of the business process management system (BPMS) that development teams love. The document attached to this post gives an overview of new features in the release. The document discusses the new BPMN 2.0-compliant modeler with BPEL execution and no round-trip problems, a new AJAX capable services-based forms designer and ActiveVOS Central. ActiveVOS Central is a complete, out-of-the-box solution for managing work, accessing reports and graphs of system activity and creating processes. In addition, the document describes additional new features of the BPMS that improve productivity and enhance collaboration between an extended development team and end users.

This version is a draft of the What’s New in ActiveVOS 7.0 document. Please check back frequently for updated versions.

 What's New in ActiveVOS 7.0: Download (1198)

Dana Gardner has written an interesting post on it-director.com about the promise of complex event processing (CEP). In reference to us, he points out that we aren”t big on terminology. That’s because terminology isn’t what people buy…they buy products. We hope that what Dana has in mind is that by being first to completely integrate a CEP engine into a BPMS, ActiveVOS has made the terminology debate unnecessary. We sure think it has.

Learn more about CEP inside ActiveVOS and see why our users’ eyes are lighting up when they see what the combination of a truly flexible BPMS with integrated CEP can do for them.

We know this time of year is supposed to be slow, but we’ve got a present for you anyway. Hot off the presses is a product review of ActiveVOS 6.0 by Paul O’Connor. Paul is SOA Practice Director and Chief SOA Architect for e-brilliance LLC (a leading SOA consultancy).

As Paul puts it “Do yourself a favor and check out this great visual orchestration system.” If you have not yet considered ActiveVOS to orchestrate your SOA based applications, make it one of your New Year’s resolutions.

One week left to enter our Bring SOA Home for the Holidays contest! Download ActiveVOS and submit your good ideas. You could win a very, very cool Lenovo netbook.

 ActiveVOS 6.0 Product Review: Download (1137)

Please, not yet another loan application demo!  Far from that. We wanted to do something totally different that visitors to the site could grok quickly by first viewing a Camtasia presentation; that could then be experienced online through a hosted version of the demo; and for the tinkerers at heart, that could be taken apart to learn how it was all built using ActiveVOS.

What better than a “Classic Car Restoration” scenario to demonstrate how, with ActiveVOS, you can model, implement, test and deploy a service orchestration which incorporates human task; Java and web service orchestration, task and process management; activity monitoring and reporting; complex event processing (CEP); and a whole lot more.

We set out to automate the estimate process for Vintage Old Stock, a classic car restoration shop. Play an eight-minute demo to get the feel of the estimate process. Then look under the hood and see how we used ActiveVOS Designer to model and document the estimate process; how we designed and implemented the process; how we simulated and tested it; and how we deployed the process. And don’t stop there! See how ActiveVOS leverages CEP and how, through the ActiveVOS Console , you have complete visibility into your processes and tasks.

I don’t like being just a passenger. If you’re like me, you’ll want to test drive the demo for yourself and take it for a spin. Before you head out, read the Owner’s Manual. Take the demo for a lap by requesting an estimate. Act as the estimator and generate an estimate. Look under the hood to see the process in action. User info can be found in the Owner’s Manual.

We’ve also made available to tinkerers the ActiveVOS Orchestration Project and a fully configured demo environment. For those already using ActiveVOS Designer, download the Vintage Old Stock Orchestration Project files here. If you want to work with the pre-configured demo environment locally, download it here. Enjoy the drive!

Cheers and Happy Holidays,
Luc

Active Endpoints, in collaboration with fifteen other vendors and enterprises, announces formation of group to promote web services interoperability.

 Ebook: Download (685)

Recently, as part of the launch of ActiveVOS 6.0, we created a new Flash animation for our website at www.activevos.com. I’ve converted the website animation to a self-playing media file for our podcast feed because I wanted to make sure that podcast subscribers and blog visitors got a chance to watch it.

Unlike the very popular ActiveVOS 6.0 demo on our website, this animation focuses less on the amazing technical features of ActiveVOS 6.0 and instead discusses the concepts that a visual orchestration system in general, and ActiveVOS 6.0 in particular, provides.

The animation runs about 7.5 minutes and I’ve uploaded a smallish version .m4v that will play on the blog and on iTunes, a larger DivX-encloded .avi, as well as much larger QuickTime .mov.

We hope you enjoy watching this and, even more, that it will explain our passion for visual orchestration systems and why we believe they are the answer for really making it possible to produce SOA and services-based applications quickly and easily.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #17: ActiveVOS concepts [7:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1574)

 VOSibilities podcast #17: ActiveVOS concepts [7:31m]: Download (210)

 VOSibilities podcast #17: ActiveVOS concepts [7:36m]: Download (92)

In a blog post on Briefings Direct, Dana Gardner comments on the importance of the release of ActiveVOS 6.0.

Vance McCarthy of Integration Developer News has posted a very interesting podcast with Active Endpoints’ Director of Strategy and Technology, Michael Rowley. Vance discusses with Michael what the concept of a visual orcehstration system is, the standards we have implemented in ActiveVOS 6.0, and how an integrated system accelerates developement of SOA-based applications.

The podcast can be accessed here.

In this podcast, I talk with Luc Clement, our Sr. Director of Product Management for the “inside story” on the development of ActiveVOS 6.0 and the features we think make it so important and unique. You’ll hear Luc and me discuss our thinking behind the new features and improvements we made in our visual orchestration system. We hope you enjoy this podcast.

 

 VOSibilities podcast #16: Luc Clement on ActiveVOS 6.0 [21:52m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1761)

Today, Active Endpoints announced ActiveVOS 6.0, the world’s most complete and open visual orchestration system. You can read all the details about ActiveVOS 6.0 in the PDF attached to this post. We also encourage you to try ActiveVOS 6.0 with our free, supported 30-day trial at www.activevos.com/trial.

 Active Endpoints Announces ActiveVOS 6.0: Download (827)

…does it matter that it’s not “BPM, BAM, BRE, BRMS or SOA?”

That question popped into my head as I read what Tim Bass has to say on this topic because, as I hope everyone knows, we’ve just released ActiveVOS 6.0 (watch a demo here and get a free trial). ActiveVOS 6.0 is the first product to contain an integrated CEP capability.

For us, this kind of “territorial discussion” goes to the heart of why we did what we did in ActiveVOS 6.0. ActiveVOS 6.0 is something new…what we call a visual orchestration system. We put CEP, BPMS, BPEL and more together in a single product precisely because we believe that unifying disparate technologies is the key to finally creating an explosion of services-based applications. 

In his post, Tim Bass talks about a fraud routing example which he describes as BPM, not CEP. That may be classically correct. But who cares? Why have unnecessary and artificial boundaries among related technologies?

That’s the problem a visual orchestration system is designed to fix: the endless need for specialists. The constant conflict developers find themselves in all the time: “I need to do a services-based app, but I get to put all the pieces together myself.” We believe that when developers can choose from among many well-integrated, category-blurring technologies in a single visual orchestration system they will produce better, higher quality applications faster.

Take cars for example. Engine technology is clearly not the same as transmission technology. People simply want to start the car, and put it in gear and drive away. Likewise, developers don’t necessarily want to know the difference and become expert in the academic distinctions between BPM and CEP; they want to do fraud applications.

The real shocker is that IBM, SAP, Oracle and others ship developers an engine and a transmission separately, expect them to bolt them together themselves and presume that their customers accept it as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We don’t assume customers want that kind of suffering, of course, and our increasing traction for ActiveVOS gives us confidence we are moving away from this “my-technology-space-is-purer-without-yours” era.

So, while Tim has a good point that CEP is new, different and important, our belief is that the real innovation today is in finding a way to put all these things together into a compelling whole.