Saturday, May 4, 2013

What's new in IBM BPM V7.5


IBM Business Process Manager V7.5 provides the following new or enhanced features:
  • A unified authoring environment for creating human-centric, standards-based Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) processes (usingProcess Designer) and integrating them with system-centric Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) processes (using Integration Designer).
  • A shared repository and a common execution environment for both BPMN processes and BPEL processes. Together, the unified authoring environment, the shared repository, and the common execution environment provide these enhancements:
    • Graphical implementation and testing of process applications, services, user interfaces, and rules.
    • Standards-based process design, using BPMN.
    • IBM Integration Designer tooling for constructing services, data transformations, BPEL orchestrations, and integration to applications and back-end systems.
    • Business rule authoring that expresses business logic in an accessible manner, providing the same rule-authoring experience as WebSphere ILOG JRules. Rules content can be easily exported to WebSphere ILOG JRules, providing a starting point for business decisions.
    • The IBM ILOG JViews Chart charting engine, which has been added to IBM Business Process Manager V7.5. For existing customized charts, tooling is provided for converting from CDL format to Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) format.
    • Property sheets that make it possible to configure implementation details rather than code them, so that less technical users can participate in design.
    • Complete life-cycle integration, keeping the solution synchronized from model design through deployment.
    • Interactive playback that makes it possible to validate process requirements at any time.
    • Shared library of all process assets, for drag-and-drop reuse and collaborative implementation.
  • Real-time control for inflight processes with these features:
    • The inbox in IBM Process Portal provides a consolidated view of all outstanding tasks.
    • A graphical view of process status helps process participants understand the remaining steps in the process.
    • Explicit event modeling defines workflow and exception handling.
    • Exposed process parameters and thresholds provide real-time control during inflight processing.
    • Ad hoc actions are supported; designated users can perform spontaneous tasks and alter workflow.
    • Users can communicate and collaborate on specific tasks during process execution.
    • Real-time scoreboards provide visibility into work in progress, along with the ability to take corrective action if necessary.
    • The framework for the Business Space user interface is included within Business Process Manager.
    • A federated task view makes it possible to perform tasks, manage work items, track performance, and respond to events, all in real time.
    • Optionally, users can perform process tasks directly from Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint. The Microsoft integrations are offered as optional add-on components.
  • Enhanced monitoring capabilities, with process visibility into both human and system interactions. IBM Business Process Manager supports insightful dynamic process visibility with these features:
    • Performance measurements are expressed in terms of key performance indicators (KPIs) and service level agreements (SLAs).
    • Business Performance Data Warehouse automatically gathers and correlates performance events and business data to modeled process metrics, for process visibility that is always up to date.
    • The process Optimizer allows visualization of performance bottlenecks and other problems directly on the process model diagram.
  • Features from WebSphere Process Server, incorporated now into IBM Process Server, provide transaction integrity and enhanced scalability from first projects to enterprise-wide solutions:
    • High scalability and availability are provided by the embedded WebSphere Application Server.
    • A single BPM runtime server (Process Server) supports the full range of business processes, service orchestration, and integration.
    • Built-in Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) components include a flexible enterprise service bus (ESB) connectivity infrastructure for integrating applications and services.
    • Supported standards include BPMN and BPEL execution and many data and service standards.
    • Integration adapters connect application and information assets to the ESB to accelerate business integration projects with rapidly deployable, enterprise-ready connections based on best practices. A comprehensive set of capabilities is included to service-enable your assets, including packaged, custom, and legacy applications, technology protocols, and databases.
    • Rich repair and recoverability capabilities are provided, including automatic retries, manual repair, compensation, and store-and-forward.
  • Support for high levels of program manageability and governance with these features:
    • Process Center provides a scalable central repository and control center for organizing and managing all process artifacts, applications, and services that are created as part of a BPM program.
    • Toolkits manage process artifacts for reuse across multiple process applications.
    • Snapshots capture the state of all artifacts in a process application or toolkit (including business process diagrams, rules, data, forms, services, and simulation scenarios) at a specific point in time with just one mouse-click.
    • Versioning restores any historical snapshot of a process application or toolkit.
    • A Process Server registry provides centralized tools to install and track deployed versions of multiple processes across various runtime server environments.
    • Life-cycle governance provides centralized control for governing deployment of processes and services to production run time.
  • IBM Business Process Manager offers three product configurations (Advanced, Standard, and Express) to match the entry point of a company into business process management. For details, see "IBM Business Process Manager 7.5 configurations" in this information center.
  • IBM Business Process Manager provides enhanced authoring tools and optional add-ons for integration with popular end-user productivity tools:
    • IBM Process Designer Standards-based process design tool that is part of the basic authoring environment for all three configurations of IBM Business Process Manager (Advanced, Standard, and Express). The process design tool enables rapid composition and continuous process change.
    • IBM Integration Designer Advanced configuration authoring environment for visually constructing services, data transformations, BPEL processes, and integration to applications and back-end systems. The authoring environment is used in collaboration with the process design tool to create robust and scalable process solutions. It includes a comprehensive set of adapters to service-enable assets, including packaged, custom, and legacy applications, technology protocols, and databases. The authoring environment is fully compatible with the latest versions of WebSphere Integration Developer.
    • IBM Business Process Manager for Microsoft Office add-on is an optional add-on to all three configurations (Advanced, Standard, and Express). Microsoft Office users can use IBM Business Process Manager to view and run IBM BPM tasks directly from their Office desktop. The Office add-on installs an IBM plug-in onto the end-user Office desktop client.
    • IBM Business Process Manager for Microsoft SharePoint add-on is an optional add-on to all three configurations (Advanced, Standard, and Express). Microsoft SharePoint users can use IBM Business Process Manager to view and run IBM BPM tasks directly from web parts that are dropped into SharePoint portal pages. The SharePoint add-on is installed on any SharePoint server that will be used to host interactions with processes through the IBM BPM web parts.
  • IBM Business Process Manager V7.5 supports the following migrations and data imports:
    • Migration of process applications from WebSphere Process Server V6.1, V6.1.2, V6.2 and and V7.0, including design-time process definition assets and inflight process instances.
    • Migration of process applications from Lombardi Teamworks 6.1, Teamworks 6.2, Teamworks 7.0 and WebSphere Lombardi Edition V7.1 and V7.2, including design-time process definition assets and inflight process instances.
    • Import of design-time process models in BPMN 2.0 format from WebSphere Business Modeler V7.0, WebSphere Business Compass V7.0, and other popular modeling tools.
    • IBM BPM Advanced widgets for Business Space can be used with IBM WebSphere Portal.

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