Oracle BPM

BPMN 2.0 has hit a major milestone with the final submission on June 22nd 2009. It passed 4 key votes and is all set to become the OMG “alpha” specification in Fall 2009. The BMI Task Force, the OMG Architecture Board and the DTC have reviewed and overwhelmingly approved the final submission. Notably, the BMI Task Force passed the “vote to vote” motion 23 to 0 thereby waiving the extended review period and setting up an immediate adoption vote which they then approved on the same day.

The approval of the June 22nd submission does not mean that BPMN 2.0 is officially adopted but it is significant because the tool vendors can start developing using BPMN 2.0. The specification is pretty much frozen at this point from a feature/functionality perspective and the main focus now is fixing bugs. This is also significant from another aspect as it is the first submission post the merger of the two BPMN teams, the BPMN IOS team (led by IBM, Oracle and SAP) and the BPMN for Services (BPMN-S) team. You can refer to David Frankel's blog to understand the history behind the two teams here:

You can refer to the BPMN20 final submission webcast for a good understanding of the BPMN 2.0 final specification.

There is also an excellent book on BPMN 2.0 by BPMN expert Bruce Silver titled “BPMN Method and Style” available now at Amazon.com he has also blogged about BPMN here.

So what's next?

• The general membership vote will take 6-8 weeks (it's conducted via email). When the vote is done, the OMG Board of Directors will formally adopt the submission as an OMG "alpha spec". This will most likely happen around Fall 2009.

• The specification then enters finalization phase, primarily a debugging phase during which feedbacks/experiences from implementation vendors are analyzed and incorporated prior to final standardization.

• The Finalization Task Force (FTF) has been created to take the specification to final standardization and consists of members from various companies such as IBM, Oracle, SAP, TIBCO, Red Hat, PNA, France Telcom, BAE Systems, Lombardi Software, BizAgi etc. The co-chairs for the FTF are Mariano Benitez from Oracle, Ivana Trickovic from SAP and Steve White from IBM. The FTF is expected to take up to a year to complete.

• The BPMN 2.0 specification changes from alpha to beta when the FTF publishes its first draft.

Dates to watch out for :

Beta Specification Publication: 01 September, 2009
Comments Due: 1 March, 2010
Report Due Date: 24 May, 2010
Report Deadline: 21 June, 2010

As one of the original supporters and early implementers of BPMN 2.0, Oracle is pleased to see the specification evolve to meet the needs of technical and business level users. As part of our commitment to open standards, we continue to be invested in this and will be actively engaged in the finalization task force, with Mariano being one of the co-chairs. With our support of BPMN, we are making it easier for business and IT to collaborate throughput the process life-cycle and to seamlessly bridge the business strategy to implementation gap.

Watch this space for more updates on BPMN 2.0……………………….

- Meera Srinivasan,
Senior Principal Product Manager,
Oracle BPM
meera.srinivasan@oracle.com