I just read the post that everyone’s talking about: Steve Yegge’s Google Platform Rant, and it is fantastic. If you haven’t already read it, go read it now and come back. I’ll wait…

Wasn’t that great? He just did a better job of demonstrating the real world benefits of SOA than anything I’ve ever seen. This “eat your own dog food” mantra that demands “no cheating” is exactly the reason why your business processes should use the the same service interfaces that everything else does. The process and the services must not be tightly coupled.

But more than that, the process itself contains critical logic that should be reusable, so the process itself must provide its capabilities as a service. This is what service-oriented BPM is all about.

The one thing that he missed is the importance of a good, strongly-typed interface definition — one that can truly be treated as a contract. You can’t understand an interface well enough to create solid code that uses it by just prodding it through an exposed REST API (hmm… I wonder what this does). Take a look at the way that Google exposes its APIs. You get a one-line description of a few simple string input parameters. Then you put in some test data, click the “execute” button and see what comes out. That is how you are supposed to determine what the service does and what the result looks like. Test and check.

Are you really going to figure out all the right tests to run to understand the semantics of the service, or even just the syntax of the result document? Also, what happens when they change it? There is no document that says: “this has now changed and here is how”. Yes, some generic announcement might tell you that the service has changed, but to know the precise impact of the change on each of the operations of the API, you would have to go back and redo all your test-and-check experiments. It is completely unmaintainable.

So, I guess I have a problem with the leniency of one line of the otherwise impressively strict edict from Bezos:

“4) It doesn’t matter what technology they use. HTTP, Corba, Pubsub, custom protocols — doesn’t matter. Bezos doesn’t care”

I expect this was a bit of an exaggeration. And even if Bezos didn’t really care about the technology used, I hope his ex-Army Ranger enforcer did. It matters. Some approaches are untyped, not conducive to rigorous documentation and/or non-standards-based. Any of those things will get the people who depend on your platform into trouble and so they won’t depend on it. They will go somewhere else.

So, what is the standards-based approach to declaring a good strongly-type API that your users can depend on? If you’ve ever read anything else I’ve written, you know the answer: WSDL and XML Schema. Include that in your edict and you will really see your platform blossom. And what is a service-oriented BPM that you can use to create processes that fit with this architectural approach? You guessed that too.

Media content management provider itfc (part of the Deluxe group) announces their media asset management (MAM) system is ready for production. The integration of Active Endpoints’ ActiveVOS, a SOA-based business process management system (BPMS) allows for itfc’s clients – content owners and broadcasters – to easily and quickly access parts of its Mediaflex solution in a single location. Read the story on Broadcast.

Where the rubber meets the road: Customers.

We are happy to share the news that Active Endpoints customer Tele2, a European telecom headquartered in Sweden, with over 30 million customers in 10 countries, has achieved some remarkable milestones implementing the ActiveVOS business process management system (BPMS):

- Scaled to six million transactions per month with goals to 12 million by year end

- Implemented in a third of the time compared with prior open source approaches

- Expanded to 20 integration projects, 50 business processes, 100s of web services

- Eliminated the need for customer service representative (CSR) intervention

Click “View” below to read the press release and how telecommunications provider Tele2 uses ActiveVOS to integrate its core billing and provisioning applications.

We understand you’ve spent years implementing a SOA but your business users still want more. They want new applications and they need them now. Your architecture is cool, but it’s a constant struggle to keep pace with all of the demands for new applications and changes to existing applications. To increase your bandwidth you need a tool that business people can use to build and maintain applications that exploit the systems infrastructure you have built for them.

In a webinar presented live from the floor of Red Hat Summit 2011, our CTO Dr. Michael Rowley and guest speaker Mike Gualtieri, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, Inc., cover best practices and tools that dramatically change the way IT and business people collaborate to create and deploy decision-based web applications.

Mike shares the three steps to delegate development of simpler applications to your business users by allowing them to change existing applications and Michael does a live demo of Socrates, an add-on to the ActiveVOS BPMS, which empowers business users and/or domain experts to build simple, yet powerful web applications that guide users to specified outcomes.

View this replay to see how guided BPM is the way to go.

Active Endpoints CTO Dr. Michael Rowley presented a brand new technology called Socrates, which allows IT to safely provide their business users with the ability to capture domain expertise into a process that can be embedded into other applications. Dr. Rowley also explained that these “guided” applications allow users to become much more consistent in the way that they do their work and as a result much more productive.

I didn’t believe it was possible, until I saw it with my own eyes. Not content with launching a fantastic productivity solution for Salesforce.com two weeks ago, we managed to release three other new items into the wild this week as well.

First on the agenda is ActiveVOS 8.0.5.  Although this is mainly a point release, we’ve fixed a couple of defects and polished a few of the features. If you’re an ActiveVOS customer you should have received an email from our highly skilled support staff by now, giving you details of how to download the update. If it hasn’t arrived in your inbox just yet, follow this link to download the packages.

Second, we made an update to our ActiveVOS add-on product, Socrates. Although we released version 1.0 a little over six weeks ago, our dedicated engineers have been working to implement many of the positive suggestions we received from early customers. The Socrates core that you know and love remains the same, but we’ve reworked much of the end-user interface to improve visibility and navigation. To be honest, there was a whole host of UI improvements, so let me just point out some of the more noticeable accomplishments:

• Rich Data Input Controls: Support for date, time and date-time, text area, masked fields for phone and social security numbers.
• Customizable Themes: Support for customized themes that match your own corporate look and feel.
• Guidance Tree Tagging: Guidance trees can be organized by topic in the Home tab. Each guidance tree can be tagged with an unlimited number of terms.
• Enhanced Search: The editor now includes a very intuitive search box that locates any text on the canvas or inside any instruction box.
• Improved Screen Step Form Editor: Screen steps can host data fields inside the instructions area.
• Auto-Step Screen Generation: Screen steps can be automatically generated based on the automated step inputs.
• Expanded Browser Support: Support for Firefox 4 and IE 9.

Well done to our development and quality engineers. They really are a talented bunch.

The third big item is an upgrade to our Socrates Instant Trial with the new 1.1 enhancements. We strongly encourage you to see them for yourself. Just login here. It’s extremely easy to try and so I strongly encourage you to see it for yourself.  In addition there’s also a new tutorial too!

So there you go.  As a marketing manager I’ve violated everything I learned.  I should have given you just ONE call to action, but instead I’ve given you three.  So go and download ActiveVOS 8.0.5 and Socrates 1.1 today, but also don’t forget to try the new Socrates Instant Trial.  You won’t be disappointed.

Clive.

BPMN was designed for the general modeling (and documenting) the processes of businesses, and in this episode of CTO Tuesdays, Dr. Michael Rowley discussed the kinds of people who are most likely to be successful at using the constructs. He argued that general purpose concepts of BPMN process modeling are probably too much for the typical business user, but proposed that BPMN can be used ONLY if the problem is significantly narrowed down. He explained that this is the exact approach that drove the Socrates design requirements. Michael then described how Socrates narrows the scope and uses a small subset of BPMN that business users can easily manage. To further illustrate his point, he demonstrated the creation of screenflows with a subset of BPMN. Michael also briefly demonstrated some of the more sophisticated BPMN capabilities and explained why they are needed for general purpose process modeling.

Today, we launched Cloud Extend for Salesforce.com, the first of a series of products that “extend the cloud” by boosting productivity for business users working inside Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications. No separate user interface. Drop dead simple. No technical skills required. Social and mobile supported.

Conversations we like to join:

- Comparing the value of on-premise and SaaS applications
- Extending the value of cloud applications
- Simplifying the creation of custom applications
- Consumerizing enterprise applications – a megatrend for the software industry
- Adding value to SaaS applications by ISVs and consulting firms

Learn more and register for the early access program at http://bit.ly/CloudExtend.

Click “View” below to read the entire press release.



In previous episodes, Michael Rowley explained how Socrates simplifies the design of screenflows through the innovative concept of guidance trees. In this episode, Michael demonstrated how Socrates also simplifies how the data is used. We saw how Socrates screenflows could call automated steps, but unlike technologies that have come before, did not require the designer to map input and output parameters to variables. This unique approach allowed the domain expert to focus on creating the guidance tree logic and delegated the complexity of data mapping to the developer instead.

In this episode of CTO Tuesdays, Michael Rowley debated how guidance trees offered a new paradigm for creating guided applications. He discussed what could be done with a guidance tree and explained how the metaphor simplified the design process over other approaches such as workflow and process modeling. Michael also demonstrated how the new paradigm could be leveraged in a powerful yet elegant manner to simplify the creation and manipulation of these trees. We ended the session with a very lively Q&A with the audience offering lots of comments, questions and viewpoints.

In episode 50 of CTO Tuesday Michael Rowley introduced Socrates, a new technology for creating Screenflows and demonstrated the guidance trees used to create them. In this episode, Michael postulated whether screenflows really are “business processes”. It’s not surprising to discover that the answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no. During the talk, Michael spent time diving into Socrates and how screenflows could be integrated with what would be unhesitatingly called a business processes.

CTO Tuesdays reached a significant milestone this week with its 50th episode. So to commemorate this occasion Michael Rowley unveiled a brand new product called Socrates. This innovative product was designed to enable business users and domain experts to build simple, yet powerful web applications that guide to successful outcomes. These applications can be used for troubleshooting, diagnostics, up sell promotions or refund processes. In fact Socrates is useful for any customer service situation that requires a user to ask questions and receive answers in order to reach a good resolution. So sit back and watch how Michael effortlessly puts the product through its paces during its world premiere.

Today, Active Endpoints announced the availability of Socrates. Socrates dramatically changes the way IT and domain experts collaborate to create prescriptive applications quickly and easily. The power of Socrates is that it allows a domain expert to design and deploy a screenflow‐based application in minutes, with no training or technical skills. Screenflow‐based applications include both question oriented workflows and automated services required to complete a task for a specific job function in the most productive manner possible. The innovation within the underlying technology of Socrates is that it provides a real and tangible breakthrough in ease of use, and is so unique it has a patent pending.



What should be on your application development wish list? Find out by watching this webinar replay where guest speaker Mike Gualtieri, Senior Analyst with Forrester Research Inc., and Dr. Michael Rowley, CTO of Active Endpoints, explore how to dramatically increase development productivity and create better process applications by focusing on design. Mike covers the three items on the wish list:

1.      Dramatically increase development productivity

2.      Designed to help developers achieve seven qualities of great software

3.      Empower “business developers”

Mike also explains why a combination of tools and platforms is necessary when it comes to building some applications and advises how to fill your toolbox wisely. Michael presents how the ActiveVOS process automation platform easily enables IT project teams to design and deploy business process applications rapidly, dramatically increasing productivity.

Today’s telecom service providers face a perfect storm of major pressures on profitability. Against this backdrop, they are charged with protecting or improving margins, in addition to the pursuit of new revenue sources. In this ever-changing industry, improving customer service and minimizing churn are key factors in maintaining customer loyalty. But supporting these objectives and new initiatives needs a new approach. This is where BPM comes in.

In this webinar replay, MWD Advisors Research Director Neil Ward-Dutton and Dr. Michael Rowley, CTO of Active Endpoints, explain how a BPM methodology can eliminate, rather than exacerbate, complexity to deliver on corporate goals. Neil delves into how BPM can offer a SOA-based foundation for seamless, simple process development and Michael demonstrates how this can be put into practice with ActiveVOS, an easily scalable and affordable solution for process integration and automation. Application architects, developers, IT project managers and systems integrators in telecom will find this replay invaluable.