BPM VIEWPOINT: Is It a Business Process Management Product, Feature or Function?

The acquisition of Haley/RuleBurst by Oracle announced on October 30 raises or re-raises the question of whether there is still a place in the business process management (BPM) market for tools and point products. Or will the entire BPM market move to “suite.” Active Endpoint blogger Alex Neihaus’ complaint about the recent Forrester “Integration-centric BPMS” analysis raises a similar question (more on that next week from a methodology point of view).

The issue is not unique to BPM and is as old as the enterprise software and information technology (IT) market. It is natural for separate products to become important features. Then they simply become ‘functionality.’ The moving of spell checkers into word processors, followed by the moving of word processors into office suites is the classic example. Will rules engines like Haley’s and orchestration software such as Active Endpoints’ have a continuing separate place in the market? Or is such functionality destined to be embedded into the major BPM suites?

Simplistically it depends on whether rules engines and orchestration tools (and other currently separate products that are also features of BPM software) are spell checkers or word processors? Generically, the question is whether they have a separate use outside of whatever suite into which they are being embedded. Word processors sort of live on separately as specialized publishing systems (and even as text editors for developers). Spell checkers on the other hand morphed into specialized grammatical syntax systems but can also be considered embedded in that instance.

So there is usefulness for the WP outside of the suite, there does not appear to be a similar separate usefulness for spell checkers. I believe rules engines and orchestration tools both have separate usefulness outside of BPM. Of course, that is true if you agree with me that IT Information Lifecycle Management (ITLM) software is separate from BPM. There are many uses of rules engines in specialized industry-centric applications as well that are not in enough demand to get embedded into ERP systems.

And there is a demand for separate orchestration and similar tools also if you agree with me that BPM is not service oriented architecture (SOA).

-- Dennis Byron