BEA’s acquisition of Fuego – Interesting & Intriguing
On March 1, 2006 BEA Systems Inc announced the acquisition of Fuego Inc – provider of a pure-play Business Process Management System (BPMS). The announcement was very interesting at the same time very intriguing indeed.
Interesting because, this is one more significant announcement made by BEA after the acquisition of Plumtree in August 2005. In the month of January, in my blog entry Year 2006 – Beginning of the end for pure-play vendors? I had commented on SOA driven Composite Application software providers.
“…These are infrastructure software consisting of components such as BPM, Portal, Integration, Mobile, Analytics, Content Management, and Services design and deployment software. Composite application frameworks aim to bring together a wide spectrum of technologies, which have been so far dominated by pure-play vendors, under one roof.”
BEA’s Aqualogic, of which Fuego is going to be a part of, precisely aims to offer what Composite Application software aims to provide. Following is an excerpt from BEA’s FAQ on acquisition of Fuego.
“…The BEA AquaLogic Business Service Interaction product line is a new, integrated set of BEA AquaLogic products used to enable companies to compose services from a wide variety of information, applications and technologies to agilely support their end-to-end business processes. As business processes change, the services that support them can also change. Likewise, as underlying services change companies can simply “unplug” the old service, version and catalog the service, and plug-in the new service with no change to the business process, making it immediately available for use across the enterprise.”
Now about the intriguing part. In the workflow space, this is second acquisition by BEA. In the year 2000, BEA had announced acquisition of Workflow Automation – a Canadian firm providing workflow engine jFlow. jFlow was then supposed be relaunched as eProcess Integrator as part of BEA’s integration offering as well as stand alone BPM engine. Even today, BEA continues to offer BPM functionality as part of their Integration suite – BEA Weblogic Integration 8.1, which supports human as well as system to system workflow as part of the processes executed within and beyond the boundaries of the organization. If that was indeed the case, then why did BEA acquire Fuego when they already had a BPM engine? Also, is there a migration path for the users of current BPM engine? Reasons for BEA’s Fuego acquisition could be that BEA’s existing process engine may not offer strong human workflow capabilities and also could be weak in the area of process definition and process management – essential components of process lifecycle.
I hope you dance!!!
I just got an email from a very wise and smart man who happens to be my brother. The contents of the mail were very encouraging and almost pushing me to acheive my immediate goal which for some reason I have been thinking is beyond my reach. The signature he chose for this mail contained a few lines from a song from Lee Ann Womack – “I hope you dance“. I thought I should share this with you on this blog even though it is a technology blog. Like me, I hope it inspires you as well to achieve what you think is beyond your reach!!! Here are the lyrics of the song:
I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
God forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance….i hope you dance.
I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin’ might mean takin’ chances but they’re worth takin’,
Lovin’ might be a mistake but it’s worth makin’,
Don’t let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin’ out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I hope you dance….i hope you dance.
I hope you dance….i hope you dance.
(time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along,Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone.)
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
Dance….i hope you dance.
I hope you dance….i hope you dance.
I hope you dance….i hope you dance..
(time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along, Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone)
- Lee Ann Womack
Process Mapping Basics – Part III
Questions one should ask while mapping the process are:
- what is the purpose of process being mapped?
- what is the boundary of the process being mapped, i.e. the start and the end of the process?
- what triggers the process?
- what is the Level 0 process? what are the inputs, and outputs (product/service/decision)?
- do I drill down to the next level?
- what are the sub-processes within the next level?
- what activities are carried out as part of the process being mapped?
- when is this activity carried out?
- why is this activity carried out?
- what are the inputs and outputs (prodct/service/decision) of this activity?
- what are the tools/resources required to carry-out this activity?
- who is the performer of this activity?
- what is the next activity?
- are there multiple activities possible as a result of this current activity?
- can the follower activities of this activity be one or many of the multiple activities identified? in case of many, can they be parallel?
- what are the business rules for each of the possible options?
- is this activity without any predecessor or follower?
- are all activities connected with each other? is the inter-relationship completely mapped?
- can i simplify the representation of the process? is it really so complex?
- has the process been verified or signed-off by the user?
Ensure that user / person whom you are intervieweing is either the process owner or an expereinced user. Also ensure that you are clear of the process mapping convention / notation that you will follow to map the process. Always communicate / carry a sample process map to the user / process owner ahead of the process mapping interview or workshop and explain the same to the user. Try and visualise the process.
