Is BPM (Business Process Modeling and Execution) the SOA killer application? I had a very interesting interaction with a global VP of BPM of BPM for a major vendor. The encounter went like this… VP on behalf of vendor demonstrates BPM tools to potential client. Everyone oohs and ahhs at the impressive presentation, graphics, and overall possibilities of BPM. The vendor product looks impressive, it works, and actually has reasonable (runtime) performance. Then I ask the VP “how many processes can this client create in a year?”. After all, creating a BPM workflow / process is relatively quick and easy. In theory a couple of days to create it, another week to test it and deploy it. Maybe a mid-sized organization should be able to generate 26 processes per year per person assigned to BPM. The VP responded, “7”. “Seven”, I remarked, “why so few?” He explained first of all the BPM processes won’t have all their steps exposed (at all or at the right level of granularity).
Enough hype! Real ROI - Let's put these technologies to work!