http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2006/04/03/ibm-puts-a-business-face-on-soa/ Bruce Silver's blog on business process management Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:37:02 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2006/04/03/ibm-puts-a-business-face-on-soa/#comment-37 bruce Tue, 04 Apr 2006 18:57:09 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2006/04/03/ibm-puts-a-business-face-on-soa/#comment-37 Sandy, I see you go back a long way too. My recollection is slightly different. The original ImagePlus FAF and WAF were, of course, primitive, but it was the stone age after all. It was the OS/2 one, FlowMark, that had less of an excuse; it didn't really work until they got rid of the object database and rehosted on DB2 and MQ, where it became MQ Workflow, remnants of which survive in WebSphere BPM today. More recently, in IBM's CM offerings, if you wanted "advanced workflow" you could only get it on the AS/400 (iSeries), which was no longer their "standard" offering. I think the point we can both agree on is that at one time IBM understood the deep connection between workflow and document management, then forgot it, and now maybe is rediscovering it. Sandy, I see you go back a long way too. My recollection is slightly different. The original ImagePlus FAF and WAF were, of course, primitive, but it was the stone age after all. It was the OS/2 one, FlowMark, that had less of an excuse; it didn’t really work until they got rid of the object database and rehosted on DB2 and MQ, where it became MQ Workflow, remnants of which survive in WebSphere BPM today. More recently, in IBM’s CM offerings, if you wanted “advanced workflow” you could only get it on the AS/400 (iSeries), which was no longer their “standard” offering. I think the point we can both agree on is that at one time IBM understood the deep connection between workflow and document management, then forgot it, and now maybe is rediscovering it.

]]> http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2006/04/03/ibm-puts-a-business-face-on-soa/#comment-36 Sandy Kemsley Tue, 04 Apr 2006 17:56:11 +0000 http://www.brsilver.com/wordpress/2006/04/03/ibm-puts-a-business-face-on-soa/#comment-36 A comment on IBM's 90's offerings in their (then) ImagePlus product line. There were three different products on three platforms, all called ImagePlus, with different document management and workflow engines. The workflow on the OS/2 platform, out of their labs in Germany, was very functional and became (I believe) the heart of some later BPM products. The workflow on the AS/400 was adequate, but wouldn't win any prizes against mid-size competitors of the time. The workflow on the mainframe, which persists today in the current Content Manager offering, is (IMHO) crap (not to put too fine of a point on it): just basic queuing, although they have been dressing it up a bit with a graphical modeller over the past year or so. Considering that they decided to carry forward the host-based product, not surprising that there is a huge schism between BPM and content management within IBM. A comment on IBM’s 90’s offerings in their (then) ImagePlus product line. There were three different products on three platforms, all called ImagePlus, with different document management and workflow engines. The workflow on the OS/2 platform, out of their labs in Germany, was very functional and became (I believe) the heart of some later BPM products. The workflow on the AS/400 was adequate, but wouldn’t win any prizes against mid-size competitors of the time. The workflow on the mainframe, which persists today in the current Content Manager offering, is (IMHO) crap (not to put too fine of a point on it): just basic queuing, although they have been dressing it up a bit with a graphical modeller over the past year or so. Considering that they decided to carry forward the host-based product, not surprising that there is a huge schism between BPM and content management within IBM.

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