BPM in Action

IBM mixes the terms services oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) so regularly that I tend to miss some of its more interesting BPM announcements because they are buried inside IBM's SOA propaganda.
• To me SOA is just what it says it is, an architecture, a set of design principles (see this recent ebizQ Viewpoint). This means similarly architected things tend to look alike and are structurally alike, as in "Gothic cathedral," "Cape Cod house," "Bauhaus style," and so forth.
• To IBM, SOA is an amorphous marketing glop, combining BPM with SaaS with cloud computing with anything else that makes the buzzword du jour menu. But if you are as large as IBM, wishing can make it so.

I guessed that's why I failed to note the October 1 IBM announcement of a slew of BPM-related professional services and product enhancements, particularly of "business space" and BPM Healthcheck. BPM isn't mentioned until the sixth or seventh sentence. Via plug-ins to IBM BPM Modeler, users can input renderings of process flows from Microsoft PowerPoint or Visio or IDS Scheer's tools. Then with Healthcheck, users can monitor their use and effectivity. Then:

"...Healthcheck will suggest a BPM Strategic Roadmap that identifies the best entry points and practices for a successful deployment."

I suspect these capabilities are IBM professional services staff tools that are being semi-productized. Hence a capability such as "space" is only presented in lower case. So this is not something to be downloaded like Lombardi Blueprint. But it can't hurt to ask IBM how these services might help you.

-- Dennis Byron