Tag: BPMN

TIBCO freeing up Business Studio

I had a briefing with Jeff Kristick from TIBCO last week about their announcements today, and also had a demo of the new 1.1 release of the TIBCO Business Studio tool.

The big news is that Business Studio, the modeling, management and simulation environment, is now available at no cost — just download it from developer.tibco.com and install it. In case you’re not familiar with Business Studio, it’s an Eclipse-based application that and runs standalone without any connection to a server. Unfortunately, the press release states “TIBCO Business Studio V1.1 will be offered as the industry’s first FREE, full-featured BPM studio“, which is not true: Savvion started this trend by making their modeling tool available for free back in March at the Gartner BPM Summit. At that time, I wrote:

We’re going to see more and more of this, I believe: vendors giving away planning, modelling and analysis tools in order to raise their profile in the marketplace, and potentially drive more interest in the process engines that lie at the heart of their strategy.

TIBCO Business Studio - modeling modeIn a post in April, I talked more about vendors releasing their modeling tools for free; in fact, at the time, I mentioned that TIBCO was releasing Business Studio 1.0 as a downloadable standalone desktop application, and I made the assumption that it was free, or soon would be. Good to see that I’m right about something once in a while. 🙂

As with the other BPM vendors providing their modeling tools for free, TIBCO’s intention is not to replace a full-up modeling tool such as ARIS or Proforma with Business Studio, but to replace the use of Visio for process modeling, or to fit somewhere in between the two extremes. It can import models directly from ARIS (and, in the hopefully near future, Visio via the Zynium add-on), and export to XPDL since that’s its default serialization format. There have been some custom imports from other platforms such as Proforma, but these aren’t productized; they do publish the XSLT required to build your own importer, so it would be straightforward for someone to build it and share it around. (In theory, XPDL makes interoperability with these tools easier, although in practice, they only write to their own iProcess Modeler-compliant version of XPDL, and some of the modeling tool vendors don’t do XPDL yet.)

TIBCO Business Studio - simulation modeI liked a number of things about the interface, especially having the simulation and modeling be two different “perspectives” on the same process model rather than having them in different applications. Simulation is really just another function within process design, so it makes sense that they’re integrated, and TIBCO’s done a nice integration here — click over to the simulation perspective, and you’ll see the simulation data right beside each activity, very similar to what I saw in the Appian process modeler that I reviewed yesterday.

I also like that they ship a number of industry samples, including the full set of standard workflow modeling patterns, and what appear to be fairly comprehensive tutorials.

There’s a few serious limitations to this version, although the near-future product roadmap overcomes all of them:

  • Only a limited subset of BPMN is supported. I didn’t ask exactly what wasn’t supported, but this sounds like a bad move to me: in many cases, partial support for a standard might as well be no support at all. Full BPMN support will be in v2.0, although I didn’t catch the timeline for that.
  • Business Studio doesn’t yet replace the existing iProcess Modeler: you have to export XPDL from Business Studio, then import it into the iProcess Modeler to get it hooked up to the process engine, although the eventual plans are to hook Business Studio up directly to the engine and obsolesce iProcess Modeler.
  • You can’t set web services parameters, which is part of why you have to scoot over to the iProcess Modeler to finish the technical portions of your design. In early 2007, they’ll be adding the web services capabilities directly in Business Studio, then other API functionality such as calling DLLs and .jar files. Their plan is to add a “technical perspective” to the environment for specifying these interfaces, in addition to the existing modeling and simulation perspectives, although that may require some sort of authentication scheme to prevent non-technical users from accessing the technical perspective, since there’s currently no role-based security on access to the perspectives.

TIBCO Business Studio - simulation reportAs I’ve mentioned many times here before, and discussed with Jeff last week, I believe that there are compelling reasons for a browser-based process design and administration, but I’m not sure that he’s buying it yet since he claims that they have no plans for a browser-based process designer. In the meantime, a free downloadable process modeler is a great way to go, since it further lowers the barriers to potential process modelling participants. It does have the disadvantage of requiring that the user have sufficient control over their desktop environment to be able to install new software, however, which is often not the case in corporate environments.

The second part of TIBCO’s announcement is the general release of version 10.5 of their iProcess Suite, which is their end-to-end BPMS. Some interesting new upgrades here:

  • The next version of the AJAX client workspace is released, based on the General Interface AJAX platform that they acquired two years ago. Apparently, my previous complaints about no GI support for Firefox are going to be resolved by the end of the year, too.
  • There is now very granular role-based security built into the client workspace environment that allows the environment to be restricted based on the user’s role, for example, by removing controls and menu items.
  • Their XML API is now fully exposed so that developers and build their own applications and user interfaces more easily, if they don’t choose to use the client workspace for all functions or users.
  • Improvements to their BAM product, iProcess Insights, include the ability to drill down directly from the dashboard into the runtime product, so that the AJAX client is launched and the user can work the item that alerted them through the dashboard. Since many BPM vendors have used third-party BAM add-ons such as Celequest, many of the BPM dashboards are quite distinct silos from the execution environment; this requires a user to take note of some index information about a problem work item in the dashboard, then manually search for it in the process execution environment so that they can deal with the problem. This integration in iProcess Insights eliminates this manual step in the middle by allowing a direct drilldown.

I also had the pleasure of reconnecting in these meetings with Carl Hillier, who was a pre-sales engineer then the BPM product manager at FileNet when I was there back in 2000-2001 — he just started working at TIBCO last week. It’s a bit ironic, since Carl was originally based in the UK, and Staffware was his nemesis; since that time, the landscape has changed somewhat: TIBCO bought Staffware, and IBM bought FileNet.

Modeling Processes in a Browser with Appian

For those BPM vendors out there who say that you can’t create a fully-featured browser-based process modeling tool: YOU’RE WRONG. Appian does it, they do it well, and if you don’t get moving on this soon, they’ll kick your butt.

I was going to just stop there, but that would be mean, so I’ll continue on with a more complete review of the Appian 1-1/2 hour, open-the-firehose demo that I received last week via Webex, compliments of Phil Larson (director of product marketing) and Malcolm Ross (über demo god) at Appian.

appian-process-modeler_296544496_o

In case this is the first time that you’ve read my blog, let me iterate my view that a browser-based process modeler is the way to go if your goal is to lower the barriers to enabling process modelling and design across an enterprise — this is one of the ways that Web 2.0 is impacting BPM, as I discussed in a presentation at the BPMG conference earlier this year. Appian is the only mainstream BPM vendor that provides a lightweight (dare I say, zero footprint?) browser-based process modeler; the only other mainstream vendor that even has a browser-based process modeler is FileNet, but it’s a rather weighty Java applet that downloads with some degree of trouble, in my experience. [btw, if you want to debate the term “mainstream BPM vendor” with me, first of all check if you’re anywhere in Gartner’s BPMS Magic Quadrant except for the “niche players” quadrant, or anywhere at all in Forrester’s Human-Centric BPMS Wave.]

I’d never had the Appian corporate overview until this session, and I found it quite telling that 3 of the 4 founders were from Microstrategy, a business intelligence vendor. Analytics and reporting are baked into everything in the product, including the user interface: all of the grid-based UI screens such as inbox views are actually report views driven straight out of their own reporting/analytics engine, which makes it easy to do things like switch any view to a chart (if it makes sense to do so). It also means that KPIs and business thresholds can be easily built into a process and seen in a number of different views, not just a siloed BAM dashboard, including viewing process execution stats right in the modeler while you’re viewing the model. This makes for a more seamless integration between design, execution, monitoring and analytics than you’ll find in many vendors’ products, although some customers may find a proprietary reporting and analytics engine, as well as their proprietary and built-in rules engine, to be problematic in the face of corporate standards for these types of platforms.

Although nothing to do with process design, but very cool and Web 2.0-y, is the ability for a user to flag a process instance or a task within a process instance as a favourite. Although this isn’t quite the full process tagging paradigm that I’ve written about previously and talked about in my Web 2.0/BPM presentation, it’s a great start.

I won’t talk too much about the specific functions within the Appian process modeler, except to say that it does everything that I would expect from a process designer, and more: full BPMN-compliant modeling including more complex constructs such as ad hoc activities (i.e., those that aren’t attached to the process flow, see section 5.2.3 of the BPMN spec if you want to understand what this means); the ability to chain activities in a process so that they’re locked to the same user and present them as steps in a wizard-type interface rather than having to reopen each sequentially from a task list; a full forms designer that will be released next month; import/export to XPDL (which allows you to model offline with Zynium’s add-on to Visio and interchange models with the Appian process modeler); different views and capabilities within the process modeler for business analysts and developers; and web services introspection and mapping. And it does it all in a completely AJAX environment, although due to support for VML but not SVG, it’s not supported in Firefox yet. Furthermore, all you need to cross the firewall from the modeler to the server is port 80 (i.e., standard HTTP) or port 443 (for HTTP over SSL).

appian-process-modeler---simulation-mode_296795634_o

If Appian really wanted to kick some butt, they’d create the browser-based equivalent of a free process modeler download: a free process modeling site exposed on the internet, available for anyone to sign up and try it out. Who would download and install a process modeling tool to try out if you could have the same functionality available online?

I’ve heard the comment from a couple of BPM vendors that a full AJAX process modeler is “hard”. Duh, of course it’s hard; if it was easy, everyone would do it. Appian started out with a Java applet process modeler, then ended up building their own AJAX library of JAVA Struts objects and moving over to AJAX in 2003 — two years before the term “AJAX” was even coined. They’ve invested a huge amount of time to make their browser-based process modeler every bit as functional and responsive as a desktop application, and it shows. It reminds me of the quote about how Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels: yeah, it’s hard, but it looks great.

OMG Infopalooza

The OMG’s fall newsletter is out (although as my Aussie friends remind me, it’s spring down there), including notice of their technical meeting in DC on December 4-8. This will include a session by OMG BPMI on “Improving Business Process Management using a Maturity Model Framework”:

“The OMG BPMI Steering Committee has been developing a plan for a Maturity Model for business process improvement, called the Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM). This program will discuss how such a BPMM would guide organizational change, relate to existing OMG standards, and how it could be made available for widespread use and adoption through the OMG standards development process. The BPMM authors include Dr. Bill Curtis and Charlie Weber, who were lead authors for the CMM/CMMI. Dr. Curtis also authored the PCMM (SEI’s People Capability Maturity Model). Topics covered will include introduction and discussion of the BPMM draft, and how it can be used by business, government and vendor communities. Specific attention will be paid to how BPMM could elevate success rates for SOA initiatives.”

There’s also an interview with Phil Gilbert of Lombardi, who is now the BPMI steering committee chair within OMG. I realize that vendors on standards committees make valuable contributions, I’m just not sure that having one run the whole show is a good idea. Are other vendors worried that the standards produced by BPMI will favour Lombardi? Or is this just a great way of forcing all the vendors to participate in the process, since they’ll be afraid of what might happen when they’re out of the room?

Today’s webinar: The Business Value of BPM

Great webinar on the business value of BPM and BPM standards today on ebizQ, and I’m not just saying that because I’m one of the speakers. 🙂 The full replay should be available tomorrow at the same link. If you attended the live seminar today, there was a technical glitch just before the Q&A where we had a bit of dead air, so if you dropped out at that point you can go back tomorrow and hear the full replay.

In listening to the replay, I realize that I talk WAY too fast — I was conscious of the short time that I had for my part of the presentation, but this has always been a criticism when I make presentations and I have to force myself to slow down, especially when introducing a lot of new information such as the alphabet soup of BPM standards. As weird as it might sound, I get excited talking about this stuff and tend to talk faster.

Webinar: the business value of BPM standards

Although labelled “The business value of BPM”, this is really a webinar on BPM standards as a wrap-up of the recent OMG BPM Think Tank, which I blogged extensively about.

Since I was at the Think Tank and have a lot of opinions on the subject of BPM standards, I’ll be presenting at this webinar (as opposed to my previous role as moderator) along with Connie Moore from Forrester and Jeanne Baker from OMG and Sterling Commerce. Connie will be covering the business value of standards, Jeanne will be doing a wrapup of the Think Tank, and I’ll be doing an interactive discussion between the three of us on the future of BPM standards.

Being a presenter on this webinar prompted me to finally update my bio on the ebizQ site; a few people who I’ve met lately assume that I work for ebizQ, which I don’t, so this should clear it up.

The webinar is on August 9th at noon Eastern, and you can sign up here.

Bluespring webinar

True to my expectations from our earlier interaction, I received an email today from Bluepring:

As well as reminding me about the webinar today, it gave me a link to the in-flight process, which now showed that the reminder had been sent. Unfortunately, a second (manual ) email was required to send out the Microsoft Live Meeting invitation instead of that being embedded in the email auto-sent by the process, so the process reminder served little actual purpose aside from reminding me how cool it was to see my webinar registration process online.

I’ve never spent any time with the Bluespring BPM suite before — it’s at the lower end of the range, and most of my clients are financial services and other large organizations that tend to buy big — so today’s webinar was a “first look” for me. The PowerPoint presentation at the beginning was thankfully short, but, predictably, included the same list of key differentiators as every other BPM vendor lists (ease of use, deployment speed, zero-code design, web services enabled), which leads me to think that someone is secretly telling vendors that the word “differentiator” is synonymous with “feature”.

The Bluespring product looks a lot like most of the other lower-end BPM products that I’ve seen, so I’ll just touch on the things that I liked and didn’t like about it. Keep in mind that I had a 20-minute demo, so this is not a formal review:

The integration with desktop applications, including email and Excel, looked good. For example, emailing to a pre-determined email address could instantiate a process that included the email attachment (an Excel spreadsheet, in the case of the demo) as an attachment to the process. I know that many of the other vendors could do that as well, but many of them would have to write a bit of code to do so. I also liked the Excel integration: an activity in the process could read data directly out of a spreadsheet attachment, then use that as a data parameter in the process. In the demo, which was (of course) an expense report approval, the process sucked the expense report total directly out of a specific cell in the spreadsheet and used it to decide if a second level of approval was required for the expenses. Very clean and easy integration.

In spite of the nice integration of the spreadsheet data, I wasn’t really happy with the explanation that I heard for how the attachments are handled. It appears that they are saved to the local drive of the BPM process engine server with no specific security beyond just not creating a drive mapping to that location. Presumably, an admin on that server could browse the disk and open the CEO’s expense report, or any other documents that were used as attachments. There should be a way to have the attachments in a secure repository, but still allow the level of integration that truly differentiates Bluespring.

The sales engineer who did the demo didn’t know about any plans for BPMN (in fact, it wasn’t clear that she even knew what BPMN is), and was totally derailed when I asked if they were using XPDL for moving process maps from Visio to their process designer. They need to not only get on the standards bandwagon, but educate their sales teams about it as well — there were two customers on the line in addition to me, although most likely the BPMN/XPDL conversation went right by them.

The last issue that I have is that the process designer is a desktop (thick client) application rather than web-based, with no plans to make it web-based. A few of the BPMS vendors have gone to a web process designer already, and I’m convinced that this is the wave of the future.

Process Analysis Models

Also from BPTrends, today’s Email Advisor has an article on Alternative Process Analysis Models (direct link to PDF):

There are a number of process analysis models that are designed to focus on more complex human interactions. One example is the RAD approach of Oulds and Harrison-Broninski and another is the Closed-Loop Business Interaction Model of Winograd and Flores. Both are useful in special circumstances, but neither replaces a basic workflow diagram.

I definitely agree with their premise that a single, common notation should be used for describing business processes for both business and IT.

Webinar on SOA standards and CentraSite

I’m tuned into an ebizQ webinar on SOA standards, News Break: The First Standards-Based SOA Forum to Manage and Govern Your SOA. This link should be good for replay within a couple of hours after the webinar, or within a couple of days if you want the full version with the live Q&A. By the way, whatever happened to the link that would add the webinar directly to my Outlook calendar? I miss that! I’m simultaneously blogging (obviously), packing for my trip to Mashup Camp and listening to the fire alarms being tested in my building, so this may not be as detailed as usual.

The presenters are Keith Swenson of Fujitsu (who I’ve met a couple of times), Daryl Plummer of Gartner (who I heard speak at their BPM Summit earlier this year), Paul Butterworth of AmberPoint, Peter Kuerpick of Software AG and Jean Francois Abramatic of ILOG. The blurb for the webinar promised:

[A]n exciting multi-vendor announcement on how the leading SOA vendors are partnering to achieve a common SOA infrastructure. This initiative will leverage an open, standards based SOA registry and repository to manage and govern the complete SOA landscape. It will allow you to analyze interdependencies in your SOA including services, processes, applications and other SOA components.

In other words, now that most vendors have figured out that most customers are not going to be using a single-vendor SOA infrastructure, they’re getting together to build some standards in the area of registry and repository.

Plummer started with a message about the importance of SOA governance, and the recent focus on this by many organizations. He stepped through Gartner’s models of an SOA framework and service registry, and touched on policy management and a few other governance-related issues. He laid a lot of the groundwork for the rest of the webinar, since SOA governance is a key driver for standards.

Up next were Kuerpick and Swenson, the two webinar sponsors, to talk about the CentraSite Community, with is both a standards-based SOA forum and a product that provides an open registry and repository, impact analysis tools, and governance tools that store, tracks and analyze processes and their underlying services and interdependencies. They launched a canned demo of CentraSite that is also available on the site, which happens at just below light-speed, so I’ll need another viewing to catch all the details, but it appears to be all browser-based and has some interesting functionality especially around interdependencies of services. CentraSite is already supported by several vendors, and any standards-based vendor should be able to publish directly to it but would need to get a bit more involved to be a full player. It will be interesting to see how this catches on over the coming months, and if it manages to sort out some of the SOA confusion.

One really interesting point is that both XPDL and BPEL are mentioned explicitly, and BPMN was also mentioned although it’s not on the slides and isn’t used in representing business processes within CentraSite as far as I could see in the demo. CentraSite is not a standards organizations, and much of the underlying standards work will be done by the existing standards bodies such as OASIS.

There is a community edition that is free of charge, and you can register to download a product evaluation.

More to come on this in the future, I’m sure.