Posts Tagged ‘BPMS’

The BPMS owns the model

Monday, February 8th, 2010

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.

VOSibilities podcast #42: Where does BPM go now? A business and technology perspective

Friday, February 5th, 2010

Attached to this post is a recording of a webinar originally delivered on February 3, 2010 that features Dennis Callaghan, principle analyst, enterprise software, The 451 Group. The topic was Where does BPM go now? A business and technology perspective. Callaghan reviews the consolidation in the BPM marketplace and discusses his predictions of the near-term future for BPM. This is coupled with a demonstration of the ActiveVOS BPMS, which is used to illustrate what is possible in a pure-play BPMS today.

Three versions of the podcast are attached. An iPod touch/iPhone-formatted .m4v, a Flash file that can be downloaded and/or played from the blog and a Windows Media 9-formatted .wmv

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CTO Tuesdays #12: ECM and BPMS Working Together

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

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.

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Alfresco CTO to present on “CTO Tuesdays”

Monday, February 1st, 2010

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

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VOSibilities podcast #41: ActiveVOS 7 and IBM Rational Requirements Composer

Monday, January 25th, 2010

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.

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CTO Tuesdays #10 Using requirements gathering tools with a BPMS

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

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.

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ActiveVOS Experiences Rapid Sales Growth in Q4 2009

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

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

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CTO Tuesdays #8: An Introduction to BPMN

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

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.

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VOSibilities podcast #39: Modeling process applications with BPMN 2.0

Friday, November 20th, 2009

We are pleased to present a recording of a webinar originally delivered on November 19, 2009 entitled Modeling Process Applications with BPMN 2.0. The webinar features Forrester Research Principal Analyst Jeffrey Hammond who delivers a talk called Balancing the Costs and Benefits of Software Modeling.

Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley then demonstrates using a BPMN 2.0 modeler to create executable BPEL processes.

A panel with Jeffrey and Michael follows the presentations.

Attached to this post are three files. An iPod-encoded .m4v file, a Windows Media 9-encoded file and a PDF of the slides that Jeffrey and Michael presented.

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BriefingsDirect Analyst Insights Podcast #46: Business commerce clouds

Friday, November 13th, 2009

In the latest episode of Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect Analyst Insight series, Dana covers the concept of business commerce clouds. Panelists commenting on this topic include: Tony Baer of Ovum, Brad Shimmin of Current Analysis, Jason Bloomberg of ZapThink and independent IT analysts Sandy Kemsley and JP Morgenthal. Have a listen to this podcast for these experts’ perspectives on SaaS, SOA, BPM, reliability, security and community as related to business commerce clouds.

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

 
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ebizQ podcast:How BPMS Delivers Value to Today’s Business

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

At Gartner’s BPM Summit in October, ebizQ’s Peter Schooff talked with me (Alex Neihaus) and Active Endpoints CTO Michael Rowley about ActiveVOS 7.0 and its new BPMN 2.0 modeler. A link to the podcast is below and it is included in our podcast feed in the iTunes Store.

 
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Dennis Byron on ActiveVOS 7 BPM

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

Dennis Byron uses a clever metaphor (“Is it floor wax or dessert topping?”) as a way to describe what’s new in ActiveVOS 7.0 in a post on itbusinessedge.com.

Time is money for TheWatchery.Com using ActiveVOS

Monday, October 5th, 2009

thewatchery

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.

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SOA Talk blog covers ActiveVOS 7

Thursday, October 1st, 2009

Last week, CTO Michael Rowley and I showed ActiveVOS 7 to Rob Barry of TechTarget’s SOA Talk blog.  I know it’s a party foul to quote yourself in a blog post, but we are grateful that Rob chose to highlight one of the main accomplishments we believe we have achieved for BPM in ActiveVOS 7:

“BPM suites that focus on business users, they don’t get technical enough,” said Alex Neihaus, VP of marketing at Active Endpoints. “They become islands of computing and sit off by themselves. And with BPMS for architects and developers, the level of cost and complexity is beyond the level of what most people are willing to undertake.”

This “third way” between the cost and complexity of stacks from Oracle and IBM and the unfulfilled promises of Lombardi and Pegasystems to integrate easily across the enterprise are why we believe we have become so popular among development teams. Looking past old buying habits and the new politics of “end user” BPM, our customers are seeking great technology at an affordable price that can be used to create integrated processes as that are themselves services.

You can read Rob’s entire blog post here.

New Forrester TechRadar™ report on Business Process Management Suites (BPMS)

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

We wanted to make our readers and RSS subscribers aware of a new report on BPM that Forrester Research has recently published. It’s titled Forrester TechRadar™ For BP&A Pros: Business Process Management Suites, Q3 2009. While must you either buy the report or be a Forrester client to read it in full, the executive summary on Forrester’s website aptly sums up in a single sentence why BPM has become a very hot topic in enterprises: “Enterprises face increased demands for improvements in business agility; BPM tools can remove many of the barriers to success.”

If you are evaluating BPM for your organization, we highly recommend that you take a look at this report. It can only assist you in understanding the broad diversity of technical approaches to BPMS.

ActiveVOS is, for the first time, included in the broad survey of technologies that Forrester’s analysts provide in this report. We’re very gratified to have been included and we hope that if our approach to BPMS as described in the report matches your needs (and we bet it will), you’ll look take a close look at ActiveVOS.