BEA Systems, Inc. - BPM analysis, opinion and insight BEA AquaLogic.pdf · BEA Systems, Inc....

BEA Systems, Inc. October 2007 BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite, Version 5.7

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BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite Version: 5.7

BEA Systems, Inc. 2315 North First Street

San Jose, CA 95131 Tel: 408 670-8901

Web: www.bea.com Email: [email protected]

1 Product Overview

BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite is a comprehensive BPMS platform that integrates modeling, implementation, execution, and monitoring of end-to-end business processes to support continuous optimization of the entire business process lifecycle. It features a specialized process design environment that supports extensive collaboration between business and IT, in effect, allowing efficient participation by all stakeholders involved throughout the process lifecycle. Business analysts can design and run simulations of a complete process without involving IT. Once the process fulfills the business specifications, it is then handed over to IT developers who implement the necessary connectivity to information systems and deploy the process.

BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite provides business service interaction on top of a service infrastructure backbone that is based on a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) model. It also automates the generation of the user interfaces required for human interaction with the process as standards-based portlets. In addition, BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite provides business activity monitoring (BAM) capabilities for tracking activity data and analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs). Both real-time and historical data for processes are collected and made available in dashboards, allowing organizations to continuously monitor and optimize their business processes.

Figure 1 provides an overview of the BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite architecture, which consists of the following components:

♦ BEA AquaLogic BPM Designer – modeling and analysis tool for business analysts; provides full BPMN modeling, multi-process simulation, documentation, and report generation with multi-language support.

♦ BEA AquaLogic BPM Studio – process implementation environment for IT/process developers; uses shared process model for full round-tripping. Includes forms builder, Web Services integration, and native API introspection for .NET, COM, Java, and CORBA. Features complete test harness, debugging, team development, and component reuse model.

♦ BEA AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server – scalable BPM engine that orchestrates all processes and their resources – people, organizations, applications, and systems – managing proper sequence, enforcing business rules, and auditing each step to ensure optimum process execution, escalation, and exception handling.

♦ BEA AquaLogic BPM WorkSpace – comprehensive Web-based environment to support enterprise-class human workflow (and process participants) specified by the business processes.

♦ BEA AquaLogic BPM Manager – real-time information console for monitoring information about processes for management and administration of the BPM Enterprise Server.

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♦ BEA AquaLogic BPM Dashboard and Analyzer – out-of-the-box BAM component for business processes with dashboards for historical and operational processes and KPI monitoring.

A collaboration version of BEA AquaLogic BPM (AquaLogic BPM Collaboration Edition) is also available. It combines BEA AquaLogic BPM, BEA AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration, and BEA AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration into a single product.

Finally, AquaLogic BPM is fully integrated into the BEA line of middleware products (e.g., BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, AquaLogic Data Services Platform, AquaLogic Service Registry, AquaLogic Enterprise Security, and AquaLogic User Interaction), enabling customers to utilize the benefits of integrated portal, collaboration, security, and SOA products.

J2EE Container or stand-alone JVM

Process A

AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server

AquaLogic BPM Server Data source

AquaLogic BPM Directory Data source

AquaLogic BPM Workspace

Server/DB Real-time & Historical

LDAP or RDBMS

JNDI JDBC JDBC JDBC

Database

Enterprise Applications

Web Services

Java/.Net CORBA,

COM/DCOM

Process Participants

Process B (EJB)

Collaboration

AquaLogic Interaction

AquaLogic BPM

Designer

Business Process Analysts

AquaLogic Interaction

Collaboration

Document Repository

Collaboration)

AquaLogic BPM Manager

AquaLogic BPM Dashboard

Business Process Developers

AquaLogic BPM Studio

Figure 1. Overview of BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite.

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2 BPM Engine

Server Environment

The AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server manages the state of all business process instances. Activities defined in the business process (and specified by the technical analysts) using one of three syntaxes (Java, VB.NET, or AquaLogic BPM Business Language) are automatically translated into compiled objects during deployment for runtime execution.

AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server executes processes created in the BEA BPM Designer tool, BEA BPM Studio tool, as well as any process written in the industry standard business process execution language (BPEL).

AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server can be deployed in either BEA WebLogic or IBM WebSphere application servers, or in a stand-alone Java virtual machine (JVM). AquaLogic BPM leverages the clustering, connection pooling, transaction management, load balancing, and failover services provided by the application server.

Any components (including integration components) constructed with AquaLogic BPM Studio are automatically deployed and managed by the Enterprise Server at runtime.

AquaLogic BPM supports multiple alternatives to manage user, role, and process metadata. For organizations that have created a centralized user repository using an LDAP directory or relational database, it provides out-of-the-box support for utilizing that resource. For customers without a centralized user repository, AquaLogic BPM can manage user authentication and role authorization information in a database it creates and manages. Furthermore, existing single sign-on services such as Active Directory, Netegrity SiteMinder, and others can also be utilized with minimal customization.

Client Elements

The BEA AquaLogic BPM WorkSpace is part of Enterprise Server and provides a high-performance workspace for business process participants. Process activities requiring human interaction are automatically surfaced in a web interface without any need for manual web page design or coding. Participants can access and manipulate tasks according to their assigned roles and responsibilities.

The BEA AquaLogic BPM WorkSpace is a standard Java web application. It may be (and typically is) deployed separately from the Enterprise Server, and multiple WorkSpaces may all share the same Enterprise Server. WorkSpace can be deployed in a Java Web Container supporting Servlet 2.3, JSP 1.2, and JDK.

Finally, the UI components for WorkSpace can be exposed as JSR 168 portlets that can be consumed by any portal platform supporting this standard.

Web Services

AquaLogic BPM is built specifically to utilize Web Services deployed across heterogeneous environments. It provides a UDDI directory for simplified service discovery for the business analyst, and easier binding to specific processes for the developer. Many BEA customers typically use AquaLogic BPM with the AquaLogic Service Bus (additional BEA offering) to orchestrate the myriad application services common in any global enterprise, and provide proper governance and control.

Similarly, clients from different platforms or technology stacks can use the services AquaLogic BPM provides. AquaLogic BPM Studio enables technical analysts to create business processes that are exposed using Web Services or to Java clients. These business processes may be pure services or they may include both automated and interactive (i.e., human) activities. AquaLogic BPM only requires access to the network location of the WSDL describing the Web Service – from this, it can automatically generate an integration component. It also manages the location of the service as an “external resource.”


This facilitates migration between environments; development servers can refer to development Web Services while QA, and production servers can refer to their respective Web Services.

AquaLogic BPM also has a Web Services API (called WS-PAPI) that allows customers to interact with the BPM engine from any external system. Organizations can use this to build their own front-end or to integrate various management and monitoring systems with AquaLogic BPM via Web Services.

2.1 Platforms As an enterprise-class offering, AquaLogic BPM supports all major operating systems. BEA can make it available on other platforms, should a customer so desire.

Design Time: Windows 2000 Professional or Advanced Server; Windows XP; Windows 2003 Server; RedHat Linux (versions 3, 4); and SUSE Linux (versions 9 and 10).

Runtime: Windows 2000 Professional or Advanced Server; XP; Win 2003 Server; Sun Solaris (versions 8, 9, 10 and Java 1.4.2 support); AIX 5.3 (Java 1.4.2 support); HP-UX 11 PA-RISC and Itanium (Java.1.4.2 support); RedHat Linux (versions 3, 4); and SUSE Linux (versions 9, 10).

2.2 User Interface The AquaLogic BPM Suite includes the browser-based BPM WorkSpace designed specifically to encourage and support human participation in a business process. When a worker must perform an activity or task in a process (e.g., provide a manual business service, etc.), the WorkSpace presents the user with the information needed to perform the job quickly.

AquaLogic BPM’s strength in external systems integration means presenting exactly the right data at exactly the right time, enabling critical business decision-making. For example, a middle office clerk may require data from multiple sources, such as trade systems, market data, and customer profiles, to make a judgment regarding a specific trade. The WorkSpace can easily present all the information required to streamline the decision process and improve the probability of successful decision-making. Figure 2 shows an example of the AquaLogic BPM Inbox Screen.

Figure 2. AquaLogic BPM Inbox screen.

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2.3 Scalability AquaLogic BPM may be run as a federation of parallel engines, providing virtually limitless scalability. Engines communicate between each other inside the firewall via Remote Method Invocation (RMI), and outside the firewall through XML/SOAP via TCP/IP for communication. This use of an ubiquitous architecture has enabled AquaLogic BPM to provide several multinational organizations with the ability to literally support their global best practices.

Process scalability can be measured as the number of deployed processes or the transaction throughput managed by deployed business processes. For example, a medical billing provider processes approximately 38,000 process steps per day on their "New Individual Business Process," and this is far lower than capacity. Additionally, a major energy company is processing around 12,000 business process steps per day. Other more automated business processes working in batch may process a larger volume of transactions.

In terms of users, the energy company just mentioned has deployed AquaLogic BPM to support 3,000 concurrent users. The medical billing provider has completed stress testing for 2,000 concurrent users.

AquaLogic BPM Engines are also optimized for high availability, and include programmatic load-balancing, failover, redundancy, and backup capabilities to ensure uptime and execution performance. An important feature of the engine is the ability to manage the simultaneous execution of different process versions. This enables companies to implement process changes with no downtime.

3 Process Modeling

AquaLogic BPM provides a graphical environment for modeling business processes that includes a broad set of activity types, role-based modeling for human workflow, and business rules. The modeling environment supports the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), UML, and several other modeling notations. Companies can also define their own images and graphics for describing process activities. Users can also add notes to a process model to improve readability. Two tools are provided:

♦ AquaLogic BPM Designer, and

♦ AquaLogic BPM Studio

AquaLogic BPM Designer

The AquaLogic BPM Designer is a process modeler tailored for the non-technical user with Visio-level skills. Business analysts can create or document processes using the Designer tool set, which enables the creation of any type of process by dragging and dropping process elements onto a Swim Lane palette as shown in Figure 3. Designer has full support for BPMN and UML modeling standards using “skins” that enable seamless switching between different views.

Once the process is considered complete from a business perspective, it can be handed over to IT for completion and deployment.

AquaLogic BPM Studio

AquaLogic BPM Studio is a process developer’s workbench. In addition to all the functionality found in the Designer tool set, it also includes numerous additional tools and features that enable developers to write business logic, connect to existing applications, and assemble UIs for human interaction. Documentation, such as use case scenarios and requirements documents, can also be attached to specific processes using Studio.


Figure 3. AquaLogic BPM Designer for process modeling (standard BPMN theme).

Studio supports multiple programming languages using a skin approach. For example, the developer can seamlessly switch between .NET and Java at any time for both existing and new codes. Studio features a wizard-driven tool to connect to external systems. Supported interface standards include Java, .NET, EJB, JNDI, Web Service, XML, CORBA, COM, and SQL.

Using Studio, developers can easily assemble the UIs required to let people participate in processes. No web design or coding is necessary; Studio automatically generates the necessary web components based on the interaction and message formats specified in the process.

Finally, the project model in Studio and Designer is optimized to support seamless iterative collaboration between business and IT. Moreover, teams can utilize various built-in collaboration tools – such as knowledge base integration, discussion threads, or common work lists – to better facilitate IT/Business alignment throughout the process lifecycle.

3.1 Subprocesses AquaLogic BPM supports the development of business processes that require a hierarchy for either process or ease of maintenance needs. Synchronous or asynchronous subprocesses can be initiated. In addition, AquaLogic BPM supports inter-process communications between processes that are not directly tied with a parent-child relationship. All processes created in AquaLogic BPM can be reused as a parent or child process for multiple projects. In addition, AquaLogic BPM offers a rich set of Process APIs (PAPI) and Process WS APIs (PAPI-WS), which enables one process to call other processes and subprocesses.

3.2 Shared Data Space AquaLogic BPM's metadata and process instance information is persisted through corresponding APIs into different repositories ranging from Directory Service and Databases (for the metadata) and databases (for process instance information). Although this information can be accessed directly from the sources, it is recommended that APIs be used to ensure consistency and data validation. The

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information produced by the Process Execution Engine in terms of business activity monitoring (BAM), and historical data is stored in relational database using a Star Topology structure that allows it to be easily consumed by online analytical processing (OLAP) and other business intelligence (BI) tools.

3.3 Forms User interfaces, including Web-based forms, can be easily developed via the use of wizards in the WSYWIG presentation editor and presented through the Web-based WorkSpace using standard HTML. Integration with off-line forms (such as Adobe Forms or Microsoft InfoPath) is also possible using AquaLogic BPM’s integration capabilities. For example, such intelligent forms can be designed to email themselves or make Web Service calls when they have been completed. Using such mechanisms, they can be easily integrated with business processes managed by AquaLogic BPM.

Web-based forms and dashboards created with AquaLogic BPM's WYSIWYG presentation editor may also refer to external pages or documents. Such references can be personalized using data from the business process or the user's profile information. The forms generated in the AquaLogic BPM Studio presentation wizard are rendered as HTML by the AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server, as needed. JSP pages can also be imported into an AquaLogic BPM project and used as UI forms by the business process. A special syntax construct called an interceptor can also leverage plain HTML or ASP pages.

3.4 Time Time is represented in terms of seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years, and is flexible enough to accommodate multiple time zones and time shifts on processes that span multiple zones. In addition to interval-based events (e.g., every 10 seconds; every 30 days; etc.), AquaLogic BPM allows events to be fired at a specific time or on a regular schedule (e.g., every Monday and Thursday; the first Tuesday of every month; etc.). In addition, SLA triggers and escalations, whether through queue-based routing, task assignment, or email alerts, can be algorithmically controlled to accommodate a variety of conditions.

Listening for real-time events is most commonly accomplished using a standard JMS message broker, but other real-time events can be detected as well. AquaLogic BPM provides a pluggable interface for adding new real-time listeners and includes a server log listener implementation as an example. Once real-time events are received, execution of process activities (typically automatic activities) begins immediately and can affect the real-time behavior of a work item.

3.5 Process Optimization and Simulation BEA AquaLogic supports business process/policy modeling, simulation, and optimization.

Process Analysis. Optimization begins with modeling. BEA proactively provides a platform for non-technical business people to capture and create consensus on business processes. This collaboration provides visibility into bottlenecks and fosters communication on how to make the entire process more productive and useful. Moreover, the output of these conversations results in measurable benchmarks with which the teams can use in simulation.

Process analysis, execution, and management. BEA AquaLogic BPM provides capabilities for business analysts to model and simulate business processes, and for technical analysts to deploy executable business process applications. This enables a complete business process lifecycle, including design, implementation, deployment, measurement, and optimization.

Business analysts can design and simulate a process inside AquaLogic BPM Designer without having to write code or require assistance from IT. This includes browsing the organizational structure in external enterprise directories and assigning enterprise roles to process roles. The platform’s simulation engine measures resource utilization and enables business analysts to dynamically modify and optimize the resources assigned. In addition to measuring activity-based costs (ABC), the simulation measures cycle time, waiting time, working time, work item counts, waiting queue sizes, and working queue sizes. In


addition to measuring the as-is processes, animated and graphical simulations assist the business user in evaluating risk and highlighting potentially constraining conditions or resources and other bottlenecks. Figure 4 shows a process simulation in AquaLogic BPM Designer.

Figure 4. AquaLogic BPM Designer process simulation.

4 Business Rules

AquaLogic BPM allow you to implement rules at three levels:

♦ Business or technical users can create, modify, or delete process rules within the process model. One example is the SPLIT activity for applying rules that distribute work synchronously across different activities and roles. Other examples include transitions from one activity to another. AquaLogic BPM supports five transition types:

1.) Conditional Transition – the path of the transition is taken if an expression evaluates as true

2.) Due Transition – the path is taken if the instance remains in the activity longer than the specified time. Time can be specified directly, via expression (e.g., X + two hours, etc.), or by looking up an external metric

3.) Error transition – the path is taken if an error occurs

4.) Compensate Transition - the path is taken when an activity or group of activities require that the actions performed by the BPM-methods should be reversed

5.) Unconditional Transition the path is taken if all other transitions evaluate false.

♦ 2.) Rules can be described using AquaLogic’s BPM Business Language, which is a high-level language used to define business rules and logic for activity types and certain transitions within a

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process. This language has been designed to easily integrate systems and to clearly express business logic. Additionally, you can express rules using pure Java or Microsoft VisualBasic.NET.

♦ 3.) Most of BEA’s customers also define rules that utilize external metrics to control routing and processing. For example, an executive might use a Web-based interface to define a metric – such as a credit risk threshold – that gets evaluated during process execution. By changing the metric (or expression) the executive can change the behavior of the process at runtime.

5 Integration and Integration Engines

AquaLogic BPM supports two types of integration with third-party applications:

♦ Integration to applications from within processes, and

♦ Integration of the BPM Suite with other systems

Integration to Applications from within Processes

AquaLogic BPM provides a broad set of options to integrate with third party applications. It delivers both direct technology base integration via introspection capabilities as well as service base integration following SOA best practices.

First, AquaLogic BPM is built to support any type of SOA investment. Services can be discovered and bound directly within the modeling tool – such as through a UDDI registry. AquaLogic BPM is fully integrated with the BEA AquaLogic Service Bus, meaning it leverages all of the service orchestration and governance offered by this product (a separate offering from BEA).

Second, AquaLogic BPM supports a number of pre-built connectors for all of the major enterprise applications, thus providing for bi-directional event execution.

Third, AquaLogic BPM can automatically generate integration adapters using technology-specific discovery mechanisms. This approach enables integration with a wide range of common technologies, including Java libraries, .NET assemblies, COM/DCOM components, Web Services, message queues, Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs), CORBA objects, relational databases, and XML documents. Basically, AquaLogic BPM introspects or discovers the metadata from any API to identify the business service and its incumbent data, and then packages those elements as reusable components that are invoked from business processes when required.

Integration of AquaLogic BPM Suite with other Systems

AquaLogic BPM features a comprehensive API called PAPI (Process API) and an equivalent WS-PAPI that exposes PAPI as Web Services. This API is used to integrate the process engine to any third-party application using either Java or Web Services programming logic. For example, AquaLogic BPM comes pre-integrated with BEA AquaLogic User Interaction, allowing processes to be linked to collaborative spaces. Customers can also use these APIs to build custom front-ends that interact directly with the engine without using the out-of-the-box AquaLogic BPM WorkSpace.

Finally, historical process data is made available in a relational database so that third-party BI and dashboard applications can access it directly.

6 Organizational Structure

By default, in AquaLogic BPM work tasks are assigned based on the role in which the activity is placed on the business process. The role represents a shared work queue by default; in other words, any


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participant with that role authority can complete the work item. Work items can be grabbed by participants or assigned by a supervisor. The business process can also be designed to implement an assignment algorithm, and work items will be assigned to specific participants based on that algorithm.

7 Process Adaptability

Version and change control is supported throughout the AquaLogic BPM platform, and multiple versions of the process can simultaneously coexist at runtime. External systems can also be made to dynamically influence the outcome of a process. In general, rules capabilities regulate the conditions by which a process will adapt to any specific environmental changes.

8 Process Lifecycle

The AquaLogic BPM Suite is designed to support the complete business process management lifecycle. This lifecycle provides continuous process improvement for an organization. Each module or feature of the AquaLogic BPM Suite is designed to address a specific phase in the lifecycle.

Define. AquaLogic BPM Designer enables business process designers (or analysts) to model end-to-end processes, define business rules, define KPIs, and simulate the process before actual deployments.

Deploy. AquaLogic BPM Studio enables business process developers (or IT staff) to integrate systems, define roles and security to support the business process, generate an end-user portal, and generate a complete process application. All process metadata is maintained in the AquaLogic BPM Repository. The source for processes, components, presentation forms, etc., can be shared and leveraged across the organization, and versioning and change controls are accomplished through this interface.

Execute. The AquaLogic BPM Server and AquaLogic BPM process engine enforce business rules, manage all resources in proper execution, invoke escalations, and provide all exception handling, as needed. The BPM Server automatically manages multiple runtime versions of the deployed business processes and the supporting integration components.

Measure and Optimize. The AquaLogic BPM Dashboard and Analyzer component enable process owners and executives to monitor real-time process performance versus KPIs on a multi-process basis to optimize the performance across the enterprise (discussed in the next section).

9 Monitoring, Measurement, and Management Information

BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite provides facilities that allow both IT administrators and business users to obtain process visibility by recording both real-time and historical process activity data that can be used to monitor the health and performance (in real-time) and to track KPIs and service level agreements (SLAs) compliance over time. For this purpose AquaLogic BPM Suite provides two components:

♦ AquaLogic BPM Manager

♦ AquaLogic BPM Dashboard and Analyzer

AquaLogic BPM Manager

The AquaLogic BPM Manager console provides real-time information about all processes running in the AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server. This console also allows manipulation of processes such as suspension and termination.


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AquaLogic BPM Dashboard and Analyzer

This BAM component provides IT administrators and business users with historical activity data for business processes running in the Enterprise Server. Business users can track real performance against KPIs as well as generate an audit trail for tracking and documenting compliance with SLA agreements and regulations.

At any time during a business process, business process statistics or process-specific data can be reported to any group (or role) within an organization. This reporting can be modeled to be part of the business process or it can be designed as a global activity that can be executed as needed. To facilitate the rapid generation of BAM dashboards, pre-built gauges, dials, charts, and other graphical widgets are provided out-of-the-box and can literally be tied to a specific business process in a matter of minutes.

AquaLogic BPM also includes a pre-developed workload widget to display the process map and all the instances at each step in the process. This can be deployed for any role needed.

Reports can be generated using the AquaLogic BPM data store as well as the BAM repository. AquaLogic BPM also has the ability to integrate external data sources – such as databases, Web Services, and other component applications – with process-specific data for reporting purposes.

Finally, AquaLogic BPM can present process-specific information using a number of chart types, including pie charts (2D and 3D), bar charts (2D and 3D), stacked bar charts (2D and 3D), area charts, stacked area charts, line charts, and waterfall charts. In addition, you can also graphically display the progress of individual process instances as part of the audit trail.

10 Templates and Frameworks

BEA’s enterprise customers tend to span multiple verticals and have very specialized processes. While BEA has packaged that experience into templates and service offerings for further reuse, these packages are meant only to help jump-start the customer's first few steps of BPM awareness.

BEA has developed strong best practices and customer references in the following verticals:

♦ Financial Services – mortgage loan origination, credit issuance, credit check, account management, and dispute resolution.

♦ Healthcare – membership management, customer billing, customer service automation, TPA administration, patient management, and electronic charge description master (eCDM).

♦ Insurance – new business (life), customer billing, automobile claim processing (P&C), health customer inquiry, enrollment, member benefits maintenance, eligibility (Life & Health), claim management, claims auto-adjudication, and re-pricing.

♦ Consumer Goods and Retail – order-to-cash, accounts payable, BPO enablement, RFQ/proposal management, shipping, customer service, billing, transportation, ERP consolidation, and M&A.

♦ Telecommunications – order provisioning, customer billing, service activation, regulatory compliance, and PIC/CARE.

♦ High-tech – revenue recognition, order-to-cash, customer service, time management, accounts payable, and product management.

♦ Process (Oil & Gas, Paper) – promise-to-pay, accounts payable, BPO enablement, RFQ/proposal management, shipping, customer service, billing, transportation, ERP consolidation, and M&A.


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In addition, BEA similarly has strong experience with the following horizontal processes:

♦ Human Resources – new hire management, expense management, and benefits management.

♦ Regulatory Compliance – Sarbanes-Oxley (vendor allowances, deal management, revenue recognition, purchase order management, controls certification, document approval), HIPAA, USA PATRIOT Act, CFR Part 11, and state & local taxation.

11 Vendor

BEA is a publicly traded company (symb: BEAS) with a market capitalization of more than US $4.7 billion and revenues exceeding $1.4 billion per year. Of its 4,275 employees, more than 90 full-time developers and several hundred support engineers are dedicated to AquaLogic BPM, and BEA's entire global sales force of 550 are able to sell the product.

BEA has a staff of more than 500 implementation engineers, many of whom have deep industry and vertical experience; 70 of them are actively deploying BPM solutions today. Of BEA’s more than 16,000 customers, 180 are using AquaLogic BPM.

Finally, in addition to a broad range of BPM and other enterprise software products, BEA also offers numerous training and service offerings.

12 Cost

Pricing for BEA AquaLogic BPM begins at $115,000 for the complete suite, which includes the BEA AquaLogic BPM Designer; BEA AquaLogic BPM Studio; BEA AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server; BEA AquaLogic BPM WorkSpace; BEA AquaLogic BPM Manager; and BEA AquaLogic BPM Dashboard.


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BEA Systems, Inc.: BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite, Version 5.7

Overview BEA AquaLogic BPM Suite provides modeling, implementation, execution, and monitoring of end-to-end business processes to support continuous optimization of the entire business process lifecycle.

BPM Engine Supporting .NET and Java, with clustering, connection pooling, transaction management, load balancing, and failover services, managing both human-centric and system-centric activities through a number of standards (BPEL, XPDL, BPMN, etc.).

Platforms Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX 11 PA-RISC and Itanium, as well as Oracle, Sybase, DB2 and SQL Server, and BEA WebLogic or IBM WebSphere, or in a stand-alone Java virtual machine.

User Interface BEA AquaLogic BPM WorkSpace as well as WorkSpace Extensions to support any JSR-168 portal.

Scalability Proven scalable in many Global Enterprises, supporting tens of thousands of concurrent transactions with thousands of concurrent users.

Process Modeling A graphical UI incorporating collaboration functions to deliver business/IT alignment though the industry's widest set of activity types, role-based modeling for human workflow, and business rules.

Subprocesses Synchronous or asynchronous subprocesses can be initiated and reused as a parent or child process for multiple projects. 5 types of transitional conditions.

Shared Data Space APIs are provided to the persisted Metadata and Process Instance information.

Forms Wizards to develop HTML forms natively, connectors to support Adobe, InfoPath and other third party forms.

Time Interval-based, specific time-based, or schedule-based events.

Optimization & Simulation

Simulation engine measures resource utilization and enables business analysts to dynamically modify and optimize the resources assigned. In addition to measuring activity-based costs, the simulation measures cycle time, waiting time, working time, work item counts, and waiting/working queue sizes.

Business Rules Business or Technical users can easily create, modify, or delete process rules within the process model using their role-based permissions.

Integration Extensive services support, many connections to common applications out-of-the-box, and a dynamic discovery mechanism for integration to Java libraries, .NET assemblies, COM/DCOM components, Web Services, message queues, Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs), CORBA objects, relational databases, and XML documents.

Organizational Structure Role-based assignments can be made automatically or manually through a role hierarchy. Also, users can audit processes and, with sufficient permissions, grab and reassign items.

Process Adaptability Version and change control is supported throughout the product, and multiple versions of the process can simultaneously coexist at runtime.

Process Lifecycle Modeling, implementation, execution, and monitoring of end-to-end business processes to support continuous optimization of the entire business process lifecycle.

Monitoring & Measurement

Rapid generation of BAM dashboards with pre-built graphical widgets. Complete OLP support for historical analysis.

Templates & Large number of vertical and horizontal templates, as well as significant vertical and


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Frameworks horizontal Services.

Vendor Publicly traded company (symb: BEAS) with a market capitalization of more than $4.4B and revenues exceeding $1B per year. BEA sells in 70 nations and supports product in five different languages.

Cost $115,000 per CPU.

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