Still, I find it odd that the core of Aqualogic ? as I understand it, BEA?s strategic standards-based SOA platform ? should be XPDL, or workflow-based, rather than BPEL, supposedly the SOA orchestration standard. And not only that, BEA already has a BPEL engine in WebLogic Integration.
David makes another interesting point in his post, that BPEL vendors like IBM and Oracle are not considered by Forrester to be ?strong players in human focused BPM.? Probably Forrester puts them in another bucket entirely, but let?s just stipulate that those companies? major interest in BPEL is business integration not workflow. So with AquaLogic, is BEA trying to compete with IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP, or with Savvion, Lombardi, and FileNet?
As I?ve said before, BPEL has serious ?issues? with trying to make human tasks portable across engines, and most BPEL vendors are still figuring out stuff workflow vendors have known since 1990. So if human-centric processes are your organization?s immediate focus, workflow-style BPMSs may be a better way to go. But I would not have thought an organization like that to be in BEA?s SOA crosshairs.
Now that he?s been at BEA for a few days now, I?m hoping that David will chime in with his version of the AquaLogic BPM story ? not so much why BEA bought Fuego, that?s water under the bridge ? but how BEA views BPM within its overall SOA context and how AquaLogic BPM relates to other BEA components.