ZapThink » Collaxa

BPM and Web services: A perfect match?, part 2

admin — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:10:00 +0000

For BPM and Web services to work more effectively together, a third emerging technology — service-oriented architecture (SOA) — is important, said Ron Schmelzer, senior analyst with ZapThink. In an SOA, software components and business processes can be exposed as services on the network and can often be reused for different applications and purposes, as well as combined in several ways.

“SOAs are the key” to the use of BPM, Schmelzer said. “When you create an SOA, at some point you have to define your business processes, because you can’t really build an SOA that’s not process-oriented.” Once you’ve defined those processes in an SOA, he said, you can best take advantage of BPM and tie it all together using Web services.

Schmelzer noted that several vendors already use BPM together with Web services in one way or another. In particular, he cited Intalio, FiveSight, Collaxa and a variety of startups, as well as BEA’s WebLogic integrator and IBM’s WebSphere integrator.

Schmelzer said that although he has seen some adoption of the two, the combination is still in its early phase. But that, he said, is because “SOA adoption is nascent, and companies are still trying to figure out SOAs.”

But once enterprises get serious about SOAs, which he sees happening over the next few years, the BPM-Web services combination will be increasingly important because “when you make the transition to an SOA, you absolutely need to define your business processes,” Schmelzer said.

Schmelzer and other analysts said the combination will be an increasingly important part of an enterprises IT architecture in the future.

ObjectWeb plans open source BPEL server

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 00:09:00 +0000

While far from pervasive, the technology is attracting interest among customers and the release of open source products could help to further its adoption, said Ron Schmelzer, an analyst at ZapThink LLC in Waltham, Massachusetts. IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, BEA Systems Inc. and other large vendors all support some BPEL capabilities in their server software.

“If you want to build a truly distributed business process, i.e. one where you’re not fully in control of all the applications, because they’re spread across more than one company or across different divisions in a company, then you basically need to make sure you have BPEL everywhere,” he said.

BPEL: Why Everyone Is Doing It

admin — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:07:00 +0000

With this backing, and in less than two years since being unveiled, BPEL has become the de-facto orchestration language standard, bypassing a number of alternative specifications such as BPML and WSCI. Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink says “It’s a foregone conclusion that BPEL is becoming the accepted standard for business process execution. It addresses 80 percent of the need, and people are rallying behind it. BPEL’s a done deal.”

Read more at: Web Services Pipeline (CMP)

Oracle Goes SOA with Collaxa Buy

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 00:06:00 +0000

Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst of SOA and Web services research outfit ZapThink, said Oracle’s maneuver is a positive step for a company that had a gaping SOA value proposition, having offered only an SOA developer kit earlier this year. IBM, HP (Quote, Chart), Computer Associates (Quote, Chart) and smaller vendors already sell SOA software products and/or services.

“This is a major deal for Oracle, because it bumps Oracle from an SOA-by-lip-service company to an SOA-in-reality company,” Schmelzer told internetnews.com. “Collaxa has been delivering on real implementations of process-driven SOA for a few years, so there’s no doubt that the addition of this product will add real SOA capabilities to the Oracle line.”

However, Schmelzer said it’s not yet clear how Collaxa technology will fit in with the rest of Oracle’s product lines, noting that the enterprise resource planning (ERP) (define) and customer relationship management (CRM) (define) application lines “could seriously benefit from an SOA re-architecture.

“But there’s no evidence that shows that they will be applying Collaxa in that way,” he continued. “Right now, I think they’re still looking to plug holes in their SOA offering. We’ll have to see if it really achieves that goal.”

Oracle Sends SOA Message

admin — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 00:06:00 +0000

“They [Oracle] have been talking about Web services and SOAs in that context for a little while and not too many people have been paying attention,” says Jason Bloomberg, an analyst with ZapThink. “Their JDeveloper product has these new SOA capabilities but it’s primarily for existing Oracle customers, they’re not getting much additional market share. The Collaxa news with the push into BPEL could very well bring Oracle some new attention in the space.”

Service Orientation Market Trends

Jason Bloomberg — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 00:01:00 +0000

Key Points:

ZapThink sees a consolidation of most SO functionality into a single market category that can be delivered as individual products, product suites, or service offerings that contain broad functionality, including features that are currently associated with the security, management, process, integration, and tools segments. We call that market the SOA Implementation Framework market.
The total SOA Implementation Framework market opportunity will go from $4.4 billion in 2005 to $43 billion by 2010.
The big winners from the shift to Service Orientation will be large vendors who are able to leverage the innovation of the smaller players to build fully functional SOA Implementation Frameworks. New entrants will find opportunity in adding value to these large vendors’ products, or by finding opportunity in the gaps between their solutions.

Table of Contents:

I. Report Scope
II. Context: The Shift to Service Orientation
- 2.1. The shift to Service Orientation affects all distributed computing
- 2.2. Shifts in market segments
- 2.3. The SOA Implementation Framework
- 2.4. The march toward the SOAIF
- 2.5. Integration: the key transitional market
III. Vendor Landscape
- 3.1. Core Service Orientation segments
- 3.2. The role of the incumbents
- 3.3. The role of On Demand
IV. Market Trends
- 4.1. Methodology
- 4.2. Core market numbers
- 4.3. SOAIF market numbers
- 4.4. Who will win the SOAIF battle?
V. Conclusions
- 5.1. Key notes
- 5.2. Decision points
- 5.3. Figures
- 5.4. Tables
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With age comes WSDM

admin — Mon, 08 Dec 2003 00:12:00 +0000

Jason Bloomberg, a senior analyst with Waltham, Mass.-based ZapThink LLC, said that Unicenter WSDM allows enterprises to monitor of the quality of service (QoS) of their Web services automatically. If a predetermined threshold of service performance is exceeded, alerts are generated.

Service-Oriented Process

Ronald Schmelzer — Thu, 17 Apr 2003 00:04:00 +0000

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Service-Oriented Process to Cannibalize Integrators

admin — Thu, 17 Apr 2003 00:04:00 +0000

As Web services support for business processes matures, companies may be able to throw out expensive and complicated integration systems through a “Service-Oriented Process” approach, according to a new report by XML research firm ZapThink.
“A process is a set of activities that are linked together into a logical flow that meets business requirements,” Ronald Schmelzer, ZapThink co-founder and senior analyst, told internetnews.com.

Service-Oriented Process

Ronald Schmelzer — Wed, 16 Apr 2003 00:04:00 +0000

Key Findings:

Service-Oriented Process is Key to Meeting Business Agility Requirements
Service-oriented process includes orchestration, choreography, composition, workflow, transactions, and collaboration of Web Services.
The market for Service-Oriented Process solutions will grow from $120 Million in 2003 to over $8.3 Billion by 2008.
The standards landscape will converge on a single choreography, orchestration, and process flow specification in the next 12-18 months.
By 2005, over 70% of Web Services implementations will be process-driven.
Services must be developed devoid of process in order that they can participate in an SOA that meets the goals of business agility
Service-Oriented Management techniques can assist in managing discrete services as well as end-to-end business processes.

Table of Contents:

I. Report Scope
II. The Context for Service-Oriented Process
- 2.1. What are Business Processes?
- 2.2. Why is Process Important to the Enterprise?
- 2.3. Connecting Business Requirements to IT Capabilities Through Process
- 2.4. Organizational Roles and Business Process
III. Fundamentals of Business Process
- 3.1. Business Process Terms and Concepts
- 3.2. Business Process Definition
- 3.3. Process Execution
- 3.4. Transactions and Exception Handling
- 3.5. Process Monitoring and Management
- 3.6. A History of Business Process Management and Workflow Solutions
IV. Applying SOA to Business Process: Service-Oriented Process
- 4.1. Web Services and SOA Approaches for Process Definition and Execution
- 4.2. Workflow
- 4.3. Transactions
- 4.4. Reliability
- 4.5. Guidance on the Specifications
V. Connecting the Dots: Process, Management, and Integration
- 5.1. Proper Mindset for SOA: Process-Orientation
- 5.2. Asynchrony and Coarse-Granularity: Enabled by Process
- 5.3. Fulfilling the Requirements for Loose Coupling with Service-Oriented Management
VI. Market Opportunity for Service-Oriented Process
VII. Future Trends for Service-Oriented Process
- 7.1. Smarter Invocation of Services
- 7.2. Portals and Processes
- 7.3. Enterprise Applications and Processes
- 7.4. Processes and Peer-to-Peer Implementations
VIII. Conclusions
- 8.1. Key Notes
- 8.2. Decision Points
- 8.3. Figures
- 8.4. Tables
IX. Glossary
X. Profiled Vendors

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