2006 new-model-year BPM software: Workflow, STP and more under the same hood

Microsoft
Microsoft's ranking on the IDC BPM leader board is based primarily on the success of Microsoft collaboration and integration server products (i.e., BizTalk Server). Remember in IDC's opinion, BPM is a value proposition, and you can accomplish BPM via Exchange as well as BizTalk, depending on your needs. In addition, the latest news from Microsoft in September 2005 is the beta release of Windows Workflow Foundation (Windows WF), a potentially more robust implementation of BPM than in either Exchange or BizTalk (and an enabling technology for the next generation of both).

Windows Workflow Foundation incorporates a mainstream development platform and will support both human and system workflow across client and server scenarios. Workflow capabilities will be available to developers via the WinFX development framework, the programming model for Windows Vista. Developers can workflow-enable applications using Visual Studio development tools. Windows WF is part of Windows and has a full rules-based engine underneath it, which Microsoft, its VARs/ISVs and its customers can all use to enable their future applications. Microsoft hopes that will make developers even more eager to use the Microsoft platform/development tools. Microsoft's Windows WF features support both STP and workflow modes, and Visual Studio developers will be able to build applications that include those features from within VS.

Oracle
Oracle  joined the IDC BPM deployment software leader board based on its June 2004 acquisition of Collaxa, and on the calendar year success of Oracle integration server functionality (which has been marketed in various ways under various brand names). In September 2005, as part of a general announcement of new Oracle technology software, Oracle showed how its various deployment software products are modular components that run on a range of popular platforms and interoperate with development and deployment technologies and business applications from other software vendors such as IBM, Microsoft and SAP.

Of greatest significance to the Oracle BPM value proposition in this component-based rollout was rules engine technology, licensed from Sandia labs and incorporated into Oracle integration server functionality in its various packages. With the business rules engine, customers will be able to modify or add business rules without rewriting the underlying application. Oracle also announced a business activity monitor function in September 2005. The next version of Oracle's application deployment software is currently in beta test and is scheduled for general availability by May 2006.

Sterling Commerce
The Sterling Commerce position is based primarily on the company's long-term success in the B2B world, which is the growth engine of BPM. Its leading product is the Gentran Integration Suite, but Sterling's acquisition of Yantra in early 2005 also helps it provide a compelling BPM value proposition. In October 2005, Sterling Commerce announced the Visibility Manager, its first hosted supply chain application within the BPM lineup, and an example of what we are beginning to measure as industry-specific BPM.

Visibility Manager represents a blending of Sterling's business integration technology with supply chain management technology from Yantra. Because of Sterling's networking culture, it claims that no migration is necessary for Sterling customers to take advantage of that combination. Visibility Manager provides document and process visibility into business transactions as they are traded among partners. It offers a view into supply chain activity with a single interface that lets customers control the multienterprise business process as a single process in the ongoing business transaction. The BPM suite, of which Visibility Manager is a part, is delivered via what Sterling calls Collaboration Network Services, powered by Gentran Integration Suite and Yantra. Gentran Integration Suite 4.0 itself was released in March 2005.

TIBCO
TIBCO's position is based equally on the successful product offering of Staffware Process Suite over the years and the BPM capabilities built into TIBCO BusinessWorks and EMS. The TIBCO BPM value proposition is also helped by the acquisitions of Praja (BusinessFactor business activity monitor), General Interface (an AJAX-compliant rich Internet interface product) and Velosel for metadata management. It also provides XML Canon, a design-time repository that manages the development and deployment of XML assets (of all types, whether or not they are part of the BPM value proposition).

Rightly so, TIBCO does not look at its BPM offering as those separate products but as the five clear functions the products provide: user interface, process design/modeling, integration, process intelligence and underlying technology. The products are tightly integrated at runtime as of October 2005 (except for Velosel, of course, which was just acquired). This offering will be extremely strong competitively both at design time and at runtime as integration of all the point products proceeds.

Reader advice
This roundup of recent announcements is intended to just whet your appetite for what's out there--a very different set of BPM functions than just a year ago, not to mention than way back at the turn of the century, when your choices were almost horse and buggy like. As Figure 2 illustrates (See P.10, KMWorld January 2006), the convergence in functionality diagrammed and discussed above is happening because underlying technology is converging as well.

BPM is primarily the culmination of a variety of middleware technologies converging to support both the run-time and non-programmer features that make the BPM value proposition meaningful. It's not a case that putting workflow and STP together, inside the fire wall or out, is a new concept. It is just that the underlying technologies such as transaction monitors, message-oriented middleware (MOM)/enterprise service buses (ESBs) and integration servers have now matured and converged to a point that can support all of the various dimensions you are looking for.

But that leaves you with some questions:

1. Do you want all the BPM dimensions in one product? There is no silver bullet in BPM or anywhere else; there are industry-centric and performance tradeoffs you will have to make if you are looking at one of those all-in-one offerings (or their clones from smaller suppliers on the IDC market share list). But in general, we believe you will like the suite approach over rolling your own with a litany of point products.

2. Do you want all your infrastructure software from one supplier? Nothing has changed in the industry for 2006. Suppliers still want to lock you in just as auto manufacturers offer their "brand loyalty discounts." There are reasons that you might not find that lock-in a problem (if the product is for a specific business process set that is unlikely to change, for example, and the ROI is rapid). But in general, especially if you are a larger enterprise, we believe you will like the products that are not dependent on any particular operating software, database or other middleware component.

3. Do you need to make your next BPM move in 2006? Just as nothing has changed among the suppliers, nothing has changed among the user community; inertia has its advantages unless you are driven by a customer, supplier, merger, acquisition or potential SEC investigation. The emphasis in the 2006 model year is to move work not only from the professional developer to the business analyst (that is what 2003-era leading products are starting to enable), but also from the business analyst to the power user. But standards and new functionality are coming with the objective that we will reach a point where no user involvement at all is required.

Will you trade up and hit the road this year (our statistics say about 15 percent of you will), or will you nurse the old Chevy around the block a few more times?