JBoss has added business process management (BPM) to its
growing roster of open source software.
The company has hired Tom Baeyens, the founder and lead
developer of jBpm, an open source workflow engine. As with its
other products, JBoss will sell services and support for jBpm but
the software will continue to be available for no charge under an
open source licence.
BPM software is used to orchestrate a series of transactions
involving separate applications into an automated flow of events.
For example, a company could use it to automate the steps involved
in approving and reimbursing an expense report.
Oracle, BEA Systems, IBM and Microsoft are all adding BPM
capabilities to their products.
JBoss, which is best known for its open-source Java application
server, has been expanding into new areas, often by hiring the lead
developers of popular open source middleware projects. In the past
18 months it has hired prominent developers from Hibernate, Tomcat,
JavaGroups and Nukes, among others.
Its goal is to make businesses less wary of using open source
software by providing consulting and support services and the
backing of an established supplier. It typically integrates the
products more tightly with its application server, although it has
pledged that it won't compromise their ability to function with
Java servers from other suppliers.
"The benefit to customers is that we are making jBPM safe to
use. We now provide support, training and indemnification, so it's
not just a stand-alone project out there with nothing behind it,"
said Bob Bickel, JBoss vice-president of strategy and
development.
Baeyens began the jBpm project about two years ago and version
1.0 was released in December. JBoss jBPM version 2.0 is now also
available. The upgrade is easier for developers to use and can
support more complex workflow patterns.
However, jBPM does not yet support BPEL (Business Process
Execution Language), a popular emerging standard for BPM. The
company plans to add native support for BPEL by the first quarter
of 2005, Bickel said.
JBoss is also working on better developer tools for the workflow
engine, which Bickel acknowledged are quite limited today. Over the
next year it will release a graphical workflow designer that
integrates with the Eclipse platform and a process manager for
web-based workflow applications. It will also integrate jBPM with
Nukes, which is a portal framework.
The first version of jBpm was released under the GPL (General
Public Licence). Version 2.0 will be released under the less
restrictive LGPL (Lesser GPL), which JBoss considers more
business-friendly.
If a user connects GPL code to other code that is not freely
available, the GPL requires that the code for the entire combined
work be made public. With the LGPL, the user has only to release
any changes that are made to the open source code. This makes LGPL
a better option for users who want to embed open source code in
other products, Bickel said.
ObjectWeb, a European software consortium whose members include
Bull and France Telecom, also launched an open source BPEL server
project recently, called MOBE (MidOffice BPEL Engine).
James Niccolai writes for IDG News Service