My ebizQ colleague Gian Trotta and his First Look team have recently investigated Appian Corp.'s latest BPM solution, as well as Alfresco Software, Inc.'s open source, BPM-enabled, service-oriented-architecture (SOA)-ready enterprise content management (ECM) offering. (Whew!) You should definitely check out Gian's posts – "Appian Enterprise 5.5: BPM Via Your iPod?" and "Alfresco's Cool Approach to ECM, Open Source Marketing, BPM and SOA," respectively. Here are some thoughts they engendered for me that you might find interesting and/or useful.
1. Truly effective BPM must be invisible, pervasive, and ubiquitous. That is to say, it must touch every user, and embrace every element of every business value chain. For this to happen, BPM, like the IT infrastructure itself, must also embrace every device and "work style" likely to be a part of the enterprise mix. This is a lot of what Appian's director of product management Phil Larson alludes to when he talks about people rerouting work or escalating tasks via voice commands from cell phones. (I'll wait until I actually see it before commenting on his idea of initiating business processes from an iPod…although I'm all over doing so from one of Apple's new iPhones!)
2. Effective, comprehensive BPM must follow the same evolutionary trail being blazed right now by enterprise collaboration and communications solutions. Multiple channels and access methods must be easily and securely integrated, to enable people to work the ways they work best, while delivering to them (only) the information and tools they need to do their jobs. This also means close integration between the IT-enabled tools used for BPM and those used for ECM, which I and others sometimes call "intellectual property lifecycle management" or "IPLM." That integration is a large part of the coolness factor of Appian Enterprise 5.5.
3. Open source solutions for tasks such as BPM and ECM can not only shorten vendor sales cycles, but can accelerate internal "sales" and "marketing" efforts between enterprise IT and business decision-makers. Instead of debating over terminologies and unstated but obvious political agendas, open source tools can be used to build models and simulations of processes, or pilot ECM or BPM deployments. Thus, open source ECM tools such as Alfresco's, or BPM tools such as those from Intalio, an Alfresco partner, can short-circuit a lot of debate and "FUD" ("fear, uncertainty, and doubt") about BPM, ECM, and/or enterprise open source solutions.
4. BPM, ECM, IPLM, and SOA are all important and intertwined, but none of them per se is the "point of the exercise." Rather, each is a step towards a larger goal – using IT to enable and empower people with the information and tools they need to perform the tasks needed to make the business live and grow. This is the "IT 3.0" focus on people, tasks, and information absolutely essential to the support of any serious effort to build and sustain a "Web 2.0" enterprise…whatever that might be…
Once you've given a look and/or listen to Gian Trotta's posts on Alfresco and Appian, you might also want to check out some relevant reading on how IT infrastructures are or should be aligned with BPM, ECM, and SOA initiatives. Potentially useful RFG research in the ebizQ Analyst Corner includes "Best Practices for IT Infrastructure Management and Business Alignment," "Building an Agile IT Infrastructure," "Business Knowledge Management," Parts I and II, "From SOA to Business-Oriented Architectures," "Making the BPM-SOA Connection," and "RFG's Recommendations for SOA Initiatives." There are lots of other helpful resources all over ebizQ as well. Go peruse some of them, then let me know how BPM and "IT 3.0" are evolving – or not – where you, your customers, or your partners work.
Posted by: A. Samarin at February 10, 2007 08:46 AM
Michael Dortch has been an analyst, 'information entrepreneur,' speaker, and writer about IT and 'the real world" for the past 30 years. After almost 10 years at the Robert Frances Group (RFG), Michael begins a new position with Aberdeen Group in September.
Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.
