Today at Impact IBM announced their next-generation BPMS called IBM Business Process Manager v7.5. At heart it is the unification of WebSphere Lombardi Edition (fka Teamworks) and WebSphere Process Server. Some have called it just “a new coat of paint” on the existing offerings, because the (Lombardi) Process Designer and the (WPS) Integration Designer tools are both still there, and both runtime engines are still there as well. But that misses the point. Where IBM last year was pushing separate fit-for-purpose BPMSs – something nobody really wants – they now can offer a single BPMS that has the combined functionality of WPS and WLE.
Beyond that, this announcement represents a major shift in IBM’s strategy for addressing the BPM marketplace. You might even call it a palace coup: the Lombardi/human/business-centric value system overthrowing the old WebSphere/integration/developer-centric value system, or even a BPM perspective rising above the SOA perspective. Given the existing installed-base investment on the two sides, this is truly a wag-the-dog moment.
Certain elements are now common to the Lombardi and WPS pieces: Process Center as the design-time repository comes from Lombardi. Business Space as the REST/widget-based end user environment comes from WPS. And certain elements are new: ILOG JRules now is embedded in the product. You can call a Integration Designer service from a Process Designer BPMN process, and you can include a Process Designer human task in an Integration Designer BPEL process. And here’s the thing: it’s ONE product. You get it all. Business-empowered design, what-you-see-is-what-you-execute, and instant playback. SOA and integration services. Powerful business rules.
I’m sure I’ll have a list of complaints and woulda-coulda-shouldas at some point (such as: where’s the BPMN 2.0 already?)… but for now, I could not have asked for more. Sure, we all expected this as the eventual roadmap, but I think everyone is surprised they got it done already.
One thing I do not understand, why does IBM comes up with so many quick versions of WLE plus they dont make any big changes? Sometimes looks like they are just updating version numbers.
I think they are significant releases… 6.2 to 7.1 and now to 7.5! The 7.1 provided snapshots, better deployment process, easy integration connectors, better control on additional project assets like JS & CSS and many more features. As Bruce highlighted there are significant improvements to 7.5 as well.
IMHO, this journey of frequent releases will continue until Lombardi is integrated with all major IBM products – WPS, Filenet P8, ILOG to name few.
Bruce – Great analysis IMHO.
I agree with you – too much could be made of the two authoring tools – they do server (primarily) different users, and sometimes you run the risk of “one ring to rule them all” getting too complicated. The key integration is at the repository layer, and if it takes more time to reconcile authoring UI’s and runtime environments – well, its hard to argue that they shouldn’t have started with the most critical part – where the data/repository lives…! Having iLog embedded is a big improvement over the old rules available in WLE.
And the change to the model, and sales approach, is also significant. Maybe the most significant change of all – as it makes the engineering efforts to combine products aligned with the sales and go-to-market strategy.
Hurray for IBM in moving in this direction. My only concern is that these family of solutions continue to be hybrid arrangements unlike platforms such as Cordys which are designed and built from the ground up bringing together BPM, SOA, Cloud and composite application development to provide all the functionality a bit more elegantly. There is a lot to be said for agility and simplicity, specially by those that did not grow up in the jungle of technology.
Hi bruce, two questions: Did you understood wat is the WBM future? Are you still in The conference? If yes can I buy an authografed copy of your book? Thks
Gustavo,
WBM continues to be supported for modeling and analysis (and updated with BPMN 2.0 export), but its role in executable modeling is being deprecated (e.g. that “direct deploy” stuff). Going forward, Process Designer is the “one” tool IBM will support for executable process design. On #2, sorry but I am home in Santa Cruz now. Sorry I missed you in Las Vegas. — Bruce
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Hi Bruce, your opinion about WBM looks like IBM BPM gurus opinion, but if this is the case, why WBM do not appear in the new IBM BPM Framework/Schema? About #2′, my bad. Wish I call you before you lived. Regards, Gustavo.
Gustavo, see my recent post on the Donut Hole.
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Good article and summary. Thanks. Where can I download a trial of IBM Business Process Manager 7.5? -Frank