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Bruce Silver's BPMS Watch
Dr. Bruce Silver is an independent industry analyst and consultant focused on business process management and content management technologies. He is the author of the BPMS Watch blog, writes the BPMS Watch column on BPMInstitute.org and also serves as BPMS Track chair at the Brainstorm BPM Conferences. See More by Bruce Silver Cool Stuff Seen at TIBCO's User Conference
Regarding TIBCO's first-ever "analyst summit" at their annual TUCON user conference, I'll leave it to Sandy Kemsley to record the actual content of the presentations to analysts. I'll stick to the impressionistic view. Apparently "the analysts" told TIBCO they wanted to hear executives talk about go-to-market strategy, so we got almost nothing about product and an awful lot about "value propositions." Are there really analysts who want to spend half a day hearing about value props and selling tactics? Scary. But, having lowered my expectations completely, TIBCO's "solution showcase" exhibits — open to the hoi polloi after the analyst event ended — actually blew my socks off: Spotfire. This business-empowered performance visualization technology was dazzling. Not BPM-specific, but a perfect fit for BAM. You take a set of instance data, and interactively scatter-plot any metrics against each other, zoom in on a region of interest, filter instances with a slider in real time, and list the instances in the set. All real time, interactive, no code. Totally cool. If they would just put that inside iProcess BAM and get rid of the IDS Scheer analytics, it would make total sense. No they did not announce that.  TIBCO iProcess Conductor screen shot. (click image for larger view) iProcess Conductor. Supposedly this has been around for several years, but I missed it completely in the BPMS Reports, and TIBCO never noticed. I call it case management, but it works as well with fully automated straight-through processes, so TIBCO calls it "dynamic BPM." The idea is a container that holds multiple processes added ad-hoc at runtime either by human decision or event-triggered rules. Each included process has its own expected duration, SLA duration, and actual duration, and processes have dependency relationships with other processes in the case, er... container. The software calculates the Gantt chart for the overall process and can identify critical paths, SLA violations, expected completion dates, all updated as the case progresses. I have had clients looking for this for years, and never knew TIBCO had it. Very cool. Business Studio 3.0. This is TIBCO's free Eclipse-based full-BPMN modeler/designer, now enhanced with an Ajax forms designer and direct deployment to the runtime environment (without going through the old iProcess Modeler tool). The free download will not include the forms piece, and you still need to buy the runtime to do unit testing. It should all be free, in my view, as the competition (Oracle BPA/SOA Suite) lets you download a unit test environment along with the tool, while TIBCO gives you a faster path from model to implementation. You would still need to write a large check to deploy into production. They say they "have reasons" for doing it this way now (but hold open the possibility of making it all freely available in the future). Bottom line, TIBCO has the piece-parts for a world-class BPM Suite, but BPMS market dynamics appear to run counter to TIBCO's overall marketing strategy. BPMS favors integrated suites, while TIBCO's strategy features component "neutrality," meaning each piece of the stack is sold individually on its own merits, not as an integrated platform that works together as a unit. The BPMS market wants to hear about business empowered implementation, not just IT agility, but TIBCO remains wedded to IT-centered value propositions. TIBCO has features that deliver on core BPM values like cost reduction, cycle time improvement, and quality improvement, but their value prop messaging has moved on to next-generation exotica like predictive intelligence. So from a marketing perspective, BPM appears to be the poor stepchild at TIBCO, but, leveraging some unique techology, is succeeding in sales in spite of it.  E-MAIL | SLASHDOT | DIGG This is a public forum. CMP Technology and its affiliates are not responsible for and do not control what is posted herein. CMP Technology makes no warranties or guarantees concerning any advice dispensed by its staff members or readers. Community standards in this comment area do not permit hate language, excessive profanity, or other patently offensive language. Please be aware that all information posted to this comment area becomes the property of CMP Media LLC and may be edited and republished in print or electronic format as outlined in CMP Technology's Terms of Service. Important Note: This comment area is NOT intended for commercial messages or solicitations of business.
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