Is it time to build in BPM?

After the Eclipse story, I thought I had better add this article on BPM (note this still isn't BPR though).

Is it time to build in BPM?: "Will 2006 be the year that business process management moves out of its specialist ghetto to become a built-in component of every application?

Some vendors say business process management should be built into applications rather than bought as a separate product:

* Traditionally, BPM has been a separate middleware purchase
* There is a fragmented market of point solutions
* A lack of mature standards has held back progress
* Now some BPM vendors market their wares to application vendors
* Embedded BPM can make it easier to adapt to changing processes



Traditionally, enterprises have seen BPM as an optional extra investment. When necessary, they've signed up for an all-singing, all-dancing suite from the likes of Savvion, Fuego or Tibco, or for less specialist offerings from existing platform vendors such as IBM, BEA or Microsoft. But increasingly, enterprises today are opting to let application vendors do the grunt work for them, taking a bundled option built into the vendor's own application. With ERP vendors, data management vendors and the like embedding BPM functionality, several BPM vendors have moved away from selling direct to enterprises and instead have started to position themselves as primarily embedded or open source options. Examples include two vendors who coincidentally were both acquired last year — FiveSight, bought last month by Redwood, CA-based BPM specialist Intalio, and Oak Grove Systems, which last summer became part of Atlanta, Georgia-based legacy integration vendor Seagull Software."