RE: [bcm] Fw: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion

From
Michael Callahan <>
Date
2003-12-10T18:13:30+00:00
ID
Thread
RE: [bcm] Fw: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion
Title: RE: [bcm] Fw: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion

Having observed the evolution of/into BPM/BCM/BPF for the last several years, I'd also caution that we remember Gartner is primarily a vendor-driven platform which "explains" nascent concepts to businesses and users. As such, its perspective is almost entirely devoid of true user/business unit perspective. If this group really believes in the words of its brochure, it will continue and help to distinguish between business process as a plumbing/technology issue (predictive, modeled) and business process tools as a user empowerment (oh, that word) issue (freedom within the process to solve problems because I have enterprise-wide visibility, capacity for collaboration, a level of trust from IT, and the ability to construct contextual data and tools at this moment as I need them).

Gartners and its vendors want to abstract the one entity which can't and shouldn't be abstracted: users. 

By the way, I'm Michael Callahan everyone. Nice to meet you all. Jean-Jacques Dubray is a co-worker of mine and introduced me to this group. I look forward to learning a lot.

Michael Callahan

Attachmate Corporation

-----Original Message-----

From: David RR Webber [mailto:] 

Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 6:21 AM

To: BCM OASIS

Subject: [bcm] Fw: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion

Keeping tabs with gartner-speak here.

DW

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Howard N Smith" <>

To: <>; <>

Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 7:06 AM

Subject: [wsbpel] Defining Business Process Fusion

> JC asked:

>

> >Gartner is pushing "Business Process Fusion (BPF)" buzz, which I view 

> >as

very synonymous to BPM.

> >What are the significant differences, if there are any? Or is BPF so

vague that it is hard to figure out

> >what it really is about? Please comment. Thanks,

>

> Analysts justify their existence by creating new acronyms to a large

degree. There is no law to

> stop them doing this, but introducing BPF just as the industry had 

> settled

on BPM seems bizarre

> to me.

>

> Business Process Fusion is one of three Gartner "BPM" themes:

>

> Jim Sinur (a guy with rules background) has been most vocal about BPM,

done serious research and

> defines BPM as a convergence of technologies such as workflow, rules,

portal, EAI etc.

>

> David McCoy (a guy with integration background) was the BPM guy until 

> Jim

took over. David continued

> to focus on integration/EAI solutions, and their evolution towards 

> BPM.

Jim's MQ (magic quadrant) and

> David's MQ have different vendors on them as a result. To distinguish, 

> Jim

called his "pure play BPM".

> In fact, on Jim's chart, many vendors there are far from pure play. 

> Many

are re-badged workflow or rules

> products for example. But all the vendor use the term BPM to varying

degrees.

>

> Simon Heyward is the process fusion guy. He's into ERP. So, SAP 

> Netweaver,

xapps, Oracle process

> connect, Siebel UAN, etc, are, for him, attempts to go beyond current

processes and digtize more and

> more business. He uses the word fusion, I use the word consolidation. 

> PLM

is part of that, or any

> large scale cross enterprise process. It's all about making more and 

> more

business digital, explicit,

> not necessarily just to automate, but to manage, and improve, and 

> learn.

>

> At the heart of this, and influencing all these different strategies, 

> is

BPMS. You can see the influence

> of BPMS on the ERP guys, and on the EAI to BPM transition, and on the

workflow to BPM transition.

> Each vendor is increasingly focussed on processes, with a different

emphasis on different aspects of

> the process lifecycle. BPMS is defined (by me at least) as a native 

> and

new technology that puts

> process at the heart. Processes are as new as Objects were when we 

> first

heard about them. But

> they work better than objects in my view in most respects. The

significance is that without an abstract

> data type to capture processes (in all their glory) and based on a 

> firm

foundation in theory, process

> digitization, or fusion, or whatever we call it, cannot happen. This 

> would

be like different RDBMS vendors

> having a different view of the relational model.

>

> BPMI.org was established to define a model for BPM, process fusion,

digitization, representation,

> management, call it what you like. BPEL has got wrapped up in that 

> work

which BPMI was doing

> under the BPML moniker. The BPML spec was the first part of our work 

> to

define that model.

>

> Howard

>

> ---

>

> New Book - Business Process Management: The Third Wave www.bpm3.com

>

> Howard Smith/CSC/BPMI.org

> cell +44 7711 594 494 (operates worldwide, dial UK)

> office +44 20 8660 1963

>

>

> To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from the roster 

> of

the OASIS TC), go to http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/wsbpel/members/leave_workgroup.php.

>

>

To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from the roster of the OASIS TC), go to http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/bcm/members/leave_workgroup.php.