12/19/09 :: [BPM] IBM buys Lombardi, SO WHAT? [permalink]
Dr. Berne would probably be amused by the BPM field: all the BPM children want to behave well and explain how IBM (one of the parents) is going to deal with one of the rare grown ups in the field. They all go through excruciating details to explain how all the pieces of the puzzle fit: Sandy, Bruce, Judith, Scott... The Golden BlahBlah Award, for sure, goes to Tony Baer, unconditionally.
Some even felt it was time to crunch more numbers. You know what is the size of the BPM market? $3B. Yes, IDC has predicted that 2013 the size of the BPM market will be $3B. The problem is, that $3B prediction has been a rolling prediction since at least 2004. Miko, is there a formula to calculate the growth rate of a rolling target? I think it is exactly 0.2%.
So why did IBM buy Lombardi? The world is holding its breath, waiting for the answer. Is it because Frank Leymann needed to win its BPMN to BPEL argument? Maybe. WebSphere Business Modeler (which first appeared on the market in 1955) needed a face lift? Hum... how about, BlueWorks sucks?
Not sure, what is certain is that BPM is not going very well at all and instead of going through the morbid exercise of trying to see which piece fits with which and which widget will survive the acquisition, the BPM pundits like Sandy, Bruce or Scott would be better inspired reflecting on why BPM is so abysmal? Why BPM's target is 0.2%? No, these people will defend the indefensible: the fallacy that you can somehow refine little by little, one layer of metadata after another from the business analyst to the integration developer.
This phase of BPM is over, the acquisition of Lombardi signals that the last decade has been a complete waste, that pretty-picture-to-execution does not work, otherwise, I can guarantee you it would be the other way around, the BPM market would be about $200B and Lombardi would have bought IBM. BPM, as it was designed an preached by the pundits, the "experts" cannot stand on its own. Live with it. Middleware has won, of course, because ultimately, the value is in the execution not the notation, and you can't achieve execution without a strong service oriented, process centric, model driven programming model. Not that IBM and Oracle are there yet, but they'll get there, make no mistake (Microsoft shot itself in the foot in that space when it put the mighty CSD "in charge" of solving that problem).
The question today is not, which pieces will go where, the question is going to be how can you influence these vendors to the right thing? In the end, they care about doing the right thing. They are just poorly advised: BPEL is not a technology that plays directly at the business process level and no you should not attempt to reduce BPMN "isomorphically" to BPEL, at home, in the lab, at the OMG or anywhere else.
Allow me to reiterate what I wrote in the "Seven Fallacies of Business Process Execution" article. The business, hence IT, hence IBM and Oracle, care about 4 things:
- Build solutions rapidly with projects as small as possible (rely on many iterations)
- Change solutions rapidly and support an iterative lean six sigma approach
- Be able to visualize the business design in operation at the present time without complex “current-state” projects
- Be able to gain operational intelligence from the current business design without complex measurement projects
In other words, Michael, the business cares about agility and visibility. Who said that the business cares about having a business-process-model-notation-to-execution engine? Who said you cannot meet these core requirements without a business-process-model-notation-to-execution engine? Ismael, Assaf, thank you for setting BPM on such a wonderful course, you guys deserve an industry award for such a service. Architecture and standards do matter, in case you have not noticed.
The business rarely cares when changes are implemented in two minutes or two days. Two days is a great first step ! The business doesn't really care if one person or two will be translating their business problem into a working solution. Who said the business wanted to eradicate IT? The problem you see is that in 2010, in the enterprise, you can't deploy anything of value in less than 3 months with a team smaller than 10 people -if you are lucky. This is a great improvement from the early 90s, where projects were commonly 2-3 years and 100 people, but it is not enough. We need more, especially on the visibility side.
So as long as the Bruces, Sandys and Scotts of the world will insist on the corny idea of "executable notation", as long as the the Michaels and the Franks of the world will tell you "we have a solution, slap a notation on BPEL, isomorphically map BPMN to BPEL", as long as that will happen, we will be in this vortex. Guys don't you think that trying for 10 years with the "best" minds of this world, PhDs, Professors, Hackers... is not the proof that it does not work? Don't you think that it is time to try something else? With the foundation that we have learned, of course. Don't throw away BPEL, don't throw away BPMN, just find a different articulation. How hard can that be? It's Win-Win all the way.
The vast irony of this story is that my 2002 articles are still referenced in BPMN 2.0. Somebody must like me very much to keep giving me this honor despite all that I write, but the only thing I care about is that their content be understood and that the articulation between BPMN and BPEL be designed per my recommendations.
The only path to move forward is to:
a) Give up on the pretty-picture-to-execution path for now, I don't know if it will be possible in the future, but give it up now, today, not tomorrow, don't create executable BPMN or a BPEL "process" notation, don't isomorphically map BPMN to BPEL, don't, don't, don't.
b) Introduce the concept of business entities and business entity lifecycles both at the engine level and articulated with BPMN and design a service oriented, process centric, model driven programming model. BPEL at it's core is fine, someone might find something better one day, but let's start with it today.
Most of the theoretical work has been done by Ksenia Whaler at IBM Zurich Research Lab. The notation is here (BPMN 2.0 has just been approved) and it is good, the engines have been built and humming. It is shovel ready.