Ismael Ghalimi of Intalio is still a young man but one of the founding fathers of modern BPM. Maybe the founding father. Anyway, today he briefed me on what he says he was aiming for all along, a project called Helium. It's BPM, it's a database application builder, it's CRM and case management, document management, social networking and online office tools. It's built for the cloud, all browser-based (Ajax, no Flash. Runs on an IPad... Ismael seemed particularly fixated on that). It's free for 5 users or less, with SaaS subscription pricing for production deployment.
It is very cool. And there aren't many BPM products I can say that about.
The difference between Helium and conventional BPM is data management. Tons of prebuilt business objects built in - contacts, appointments, tasks, etc. - and very easy to create your own. It's a short leap from there to CRM, ECM, and case management. Everything is exposed through widgets that you mash up in various workspaces. Here is one for CRM.
There is a BPMN 2.0 editor, and coming this fall a native BPMN 2.0 runtime (supports BPEL today).
There is a Mashup Studio where you can graphically extract data from various places, manipulate it, and publish the result to a feed or widget or whatever else you want.
You can select any object - process, document, case, appointment - and in one click create a social BPM collaboration space prepopulated by widgets defined in a template. Case management seems a natural fit for Helium.
Helium's social BPM features make the use of that term by other BPMS vendors look pathetic by comparison.
I want it. (And I don't even own an IPad.)