Earlier this week, one of our key customers was looking into exporting some of its IT processes from the organizations process asset repository system to IBM Process Server, a business process management (BPM) system.

BPM systems utilize business process execution language (BPEL), XML based language, for process representation. Using IRIS Process Author’s export facility, we are able to quickly define a script that generates BPEL representation of a process which can be consumed by BPM applications. The flexibility of the export facility stems from the fact that IRIS Process Author’s process object model is accessible from within export scripts. Hence, the script logic can directly reference process objects of the asset repository and transform and export the process elements into the desired format.

Usefulness of BPEL goes beyond BPM systems, Microsoft Window Workflow Foundation, currently embedded in BizTalk, SharePoint and Dynamics CRM, also supports BPEL. Therefore, aside from BPM systems, once in BPEL format, the organization’s processes can be used by a variety of applications.

In the first draft of my white paper, I failed to point out the importance of a flexible export facility for the organization’s process asset repository system. I will correct this omission in the next version of the white paper.

Seamless interface with BMP extends the usefulness of the organization’s process asset repository system beyond IT and software process improvement and extends it to the realm of business process improvement. But, the relationship between BPM and process improvement and the differences between IT processes and business processes deserve much more discussion. I will dig deeper into these areas in future posts.