On April 1st, I fooled readers of ARIS Community by claiming that in the next service release ARIS is abandoning the EPC notation and forcing its users to go with BPMN 2. I didn't imagine the April's fool to work that well, because it would be a very unprofessional move by a tool vendor to de-support the method he marketed for more than 10 years. We are not unprofessional and we won't do that - promised!
Yesterday, the releases ARIS 7.2 and webMethods 8.2 were officially announced (readers of ARIS Community already knew about it for some weeks). Those new releases feature a new level of integration between both tool families. You can now get from your business process model in ARIS down to an executable one in webMethods and all the way up again with complete roundtrip support. Software services used are managed in CentraSite so that both tools, ARIS and webMethods, can use them in a unified manner. My colleagues already started a blog sequel about this integration to give you all the details. At the end of this post, you will find a list of all articles published so far.
The integration between ARIS and webMethods uses BPMN 2 models as synchronisation layer. A BPMN 2 model created in ARIS gets transferred to webMethods Designer and is further refined there for implementation. The use of BPMN 2 models as interface between both tools let the BPMN evangelist Bruce Silver conclude that we are abandoning the EPC notation and asking customers to go with BPMN 2 from now on. Well, that's not true, because it would be unprofessional (see above)!
Having BPMN 2 models as the interface between both tools doesn't mean you have to create them on your own. Included in the integration bundle is an automated transformation, which can turn your EPC models in BPMN 2 models if you like. That's not just a marketing gimmick, but a fundamental feature of the overall solution. Some of our customers created several thousand EPC models over the last 10-15 years. We simply can't and won't ask them to restart using BPMN 2. Also, many experienced BPM consultants are convinced that BPMN 2 is not the right notation for business process modelling, because it is simply too complicated to teach to an inexperienced process worker, who should participate in such a process mapping effort.
The strength of a tool family like ARIS Platform is that it gives the user maximum choice. You are not forced to use either BPMN 2 or EPC, but we give you the best professional support available so that you can tailor your modelling conventions the way it best fits your needs!
List of articles about ARIS and webMethods integration:
- overview enterprise business process management (EBPM)
- SOA portfolio management with ARIS and CentraSite
- about service oriented process modelling
- modelling requirements for the EPC to BPMN transformation
- sharing a process between ARIS and webMethods
- Roundtripping - Overcome the BPM gap
- ...to be extended...
A new article about sharing a process created in ARIS with webMethods is online by Katrina.
