Here’s an interesting tidbit from the very bottom of an article on TIBCO’s recent upgrades to its BPM platform (formerly the Staffware product):
The company [TIBCO] has upgraded the BPM user interface, as well, to include AJAX for the development of RIA (Rich Internet Applications).
Significant that a large BPM vendor acknowledges the existence of Web 2.0.
Considering that BPM products are, by their nature, typically both consumers and providers of web services (they are, after all, orchestration tools), how long until a mainstream BPM vendor jumps into the mashup fray? There’s already companies such as The Process Factory offering BPM in a software as a service (SaaS) model, we just need a BPM SaaS provider who also opens up the functionality via web services for integration into other applications, like Salesforce.com has done.
Or should BPM remain a part of an organization’s internal backbone?
I imagine we’ll see a lot of Ajax out of Tibco, given Tibco’s purchase of General Interface (http://www.tibco.com/software/business_optimization/generalinterface.jsp)
I think we are in a “mix and match” world, and am encouraged to see vendors like Tibco jump in.