At Oracle Open World yesterday, industry analysts got a good look at Oracle’s BPM strategy and roadmap in the wake of the BEA acquisition. Overall, my conclusion is Oracle is showing the rest of the world the right way to do software acquisitions. BPM is progressing along the path of “interoperate, integrate, unify” that Oracle claims it tries to follow with all of its acquisitions.
Before the BEA deal there was the Oracle BPM solution comprised of SOA Suite (in particular BPEL Process Manager) and BPA Suite (rebranded ARIS with a BPEL roundtripping extension), and there was BEA’s AquaLogic BPM. For details on those, see my BPMS Report series on BPMInstitute.org. Now there is the Oracle BPM Suite, which includes both Oracle BPM (rebranded from ALBPM) and BPEL PM. They “interoperate” in the sense that each can call the other as a subprocess. (Not a big deal, but Oracle did this in 100 days whereas WebSphere-FileNet took a year.) BPA Suite is still there, but more off to the side where it belongs; Oracle now calls it “enterprise modeling.”
More interesting is the plan for release 11g next year: unification of the BPMS platform. The BPM Suite offering gives you both BPEL PM and Oracle BPM. They have different design environments but common runtime engine. The executable design language for one is BPEL 2.0 and for the other is BPMN 2.0 (ported from XPDL). BPM Studio (i.e. the ALBPM design environment, fully BPMN-based) will run in JDeveloper (along with BPEL Process Designer), and JDev will be extended to support separate business and IT perspectives. Both BPM and BPEL PM will use the same human task service, based on WS-HumanTask and BPEL4People, and the same rule designer and engine (from SOA Suite).
At this point the two offerings become alternative design styles for a single BPM platform. Besides human tasks and rules, they will also share a common process portal, which adds ALBPM Collaboration Edition Components to a web 2.0 framework built on Oracle WebCenter; common BAM/BI layer; common BPM Server built on SCA, WebLogic Server, JRockit JVM, Oracle Application Grid, and Coherence distributed caching; and Enterprise Manager, a unified management console for all runtime components. One more thing we can’t forget is BPM Studio integration with an Enterprise Repository, which automatically creates dependency maps for all modeling/design components checked in. All of this is promised (subject to the usual lawyered-up safe harbor disclaimers) for this time next year.
And I forgot to mention that, like all Oracle products, the design tools and development runtime are free. There is no license key; you just download the software and go.
OK, it’s still a year off. But while IBM and TIBCO have been making slow and steady progress in unifying their respective BPMS offerings, Oracle’s plans leave them both in the dust from both a scope and speed standpoint.
6 Responses to “Oracle BPM Roadmap”
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Bruce,
Very nice article! Interestingly enough, Oracle’s stack looks very much like Intalio|BPMS. Same components, same support for BPMN 2.0, BPEL 2.0, and BPEL4People. Differences?
- Intalio|BPMS is available today.
- Intalio|BPMS is available for free (not just the tool, the whole BPMS)
- Our designer is built on Eclipse.
- Our designer does not require import/export of models from a separate tool.
Enjoy!
-Ismael
[...] friend Bruce Silver has a nice post describing Oracle’s BPM roadmap. From support for BPMN 2.0 and BPEL 2.0, to integration with [...]
Interesting enough to see Oracle presenting a sound strategy in BPM: it proves they believe in BPM’s take off, which is good news for any BPM vendor.
However is that collection of technical bricks different from what all other vendors propose, being licence based or service based -open source- vendors? How does that dramatically change productivity, ROI and IT value?
At RunMyProcess we believe we dramatically change the form factor of traditional Business Process Engines. No longer need for a large budget to get started, no longer need to take risk in deploying a large and unfamiliar piece of infrastructure in several environments (development, test, production…). That, and many more acelerators, are already configured and available “as a service”. ROI within 3 to 6 months is possible, it’s just a matter of changing the game’s rules, toward users’ interest, at last…
Couple comments regarding Intalio’s statement about BPMN 2.0
- BPMN 2.0 is not final, and it will have some changes, specially in visual diagram, persistence and some execution semantics.
- Oracle BPM do not require import/export if you don’t use BPA. AquaLogic BPM can be used as a complete development environment. Using BPA is an extra value for enterprise modeling, while process modeling can be done completely in BPM.
- It is natural for vendors to offer similar products, this actually shows a maturity of the market and vendors.
- A year from now, Oracle BPM Suite will gather an impressive set of products that together will create a really powerful BPM Infrastructure to deploy enterprise wide BPM applications.
MAriano
Oracle BPM Architect.
[...] Oracle’s Borg-like acquisition of BEA back in June, and Bruce Silver recently agreed that Oracle knows how to do acquisitions right, and discussed the Oracle middleware product strategy outlined at Open World last [...]
I agree with a lot of what Bruce has said. ORALCE BPM roadmap surely points towards a more complete product suite and more advanced enterprise-grade capabilities. (Application Grid, Coherence Distributed Caching, and Enterprise Manager) – used rightly could add tremendous value and advance the already feature-rich ALBPM capabilities & make it more robust.
What is going to be critical, is to preserve the interests of the large community of people utilizing AquaLogic BPM and how well the migration path (& toolset) is from ALBPM 6.0 or OBPM 10g to OBPM 11g.
The one aspect that I’m not too crazy about is the dependence of ORACLE BPA Suite on IDS-Scheer suite. IDS-Scheer is a very comprehensive product and probably has a lot of good functionality/features; but it is also very complex, and not so easy to use. Wider adoption across an enterprise is harder, with such a complex tool. It is obviously an important aspect for an BPM expert’s toolbox.
I can’t help but wonder about the length of the OEM deal with IDS-Scheer. Will it last? Will ORACLE acquire IDS-Scheer and address some of the pitfalls of ARIS (complexity, exclusivity) and make it more simple? If this acquisition does happen – will ORACLE also apply the “interoperate, integrate, UNIFY” (more emphasis on unify) with its core BPM capabilities?
Cheers,
Kunal
Sr. Enteprise Architect, BPM Strategy
Previously, Global Engineering Lead, BPM Platform
Financial Services Company