The journey of business process management (BPM) from technologies such as document flow routing to service-oriented architecture (SOA)-based Web services has been a process of evolution rather than revolution.

In this article, we'll discuss the convergence of Web services and business process management, how Web services alleviate some of the core problems with BPM, and how Web services can help companies evolve into process-based organizations leading to increased efficiency and lower operational costs.

It's all about processes, after all.
Business process management (BPM) enables enterprises to automate and integrate the disparate internal and external corporate business processes. It does so by supporting dynamic process topologies that allow the boundary between processes and participants to be determined either statically or dynamically on a real-time basis. Further, its implementation provides every corporation the opportunity to redefine and automate core business processes, which results in streamlined business operations and reduced cost.

BPM for enterprise application integration (EAI) enables companies to achieve internal systems that are truly integrated using automated workflows. The business processes that control information flow by coordinating interactions with business applications and systems within an organization are called private or closed (see Figure 1).

BPM for business-to-business integration (B2Bi) focuses on how business partners can refine their business processes so that the applications supporting them can be seamlessly integrated. With effective BPM, companies can become part of a unified business process flow and unified supply chain. Unified workflows allow the dynamic sharing of state information among trading partners through which all communication can be tracked and recorded. Since B2B transactions can span multiple days, unified workflows become critical in ensuring the completion of automated business transactions. The external business processes that control interactions among independent trading partners are called public or open (see Figure 2).

Web Services: Business Operations by Definition
By definition, Web services describe a collection of business operations that are network-accessible through standardized XML messaging based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), a standard messaging layer used to exchange XML documents in Web services. In other words, Web services expose applications supporting business operations, encapsulating business logic, and accessing business data over the network or Internet using interfaces that can be invoked. The main advantage of Web services is that companies can use these interfaces for process management, logic transformation, and integration for legacy and packaged applications, instead of writing nonstandards-based custom code for each application.

A Web service can be implemented as its own business process, or it may be composed of many business processes (both public and private) with each business process being implemented as a Web service in itself. Each activity that is part of the workflow of a business process is logically linked to a Web service.

Web Services Alleviate Complexities of BPM
Although BPM poses difficulties with both soft (such as human resistance and behavioral issues) and hard elements (such as technology, tools, and techniques), we will limit our discussion to technological aspects and complexities and how Web services alleviate some of those.

• Easier BPM: Web services help to clearly separate business process logic and the participating business services, thereby making the development, execution, and management of these services much easier. Apart from easier application integration, user-centric Web services make the human intervention (which may be an activity in a business process workflow) easier by providing personalization, interface customization, and support for multiple languages, greatly enhancing the user experience.
• Easy integration with applications: A typical business process may be supported by multiple diverse applications such as ERP, CRM, SCM, and legacy systems. It's virtually impossible to manage a workflow and execute the different tasks associated with it, which may require using other systems' APIs or exchanging messages with them, unless the underlying technology provides easy integration facilities. XML-based Web services are the ideal technology for BPM, as they allow applications to communicate across the Internet in a platform- and language-independent fashion.
• Based on open standards: Since B2Bi requires integration of business processes across corporate boundaries using exchange of XML-based documents or messages, the communication among different systems should be based on open standards. Web services fully leverage open standards, including Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP); eXtensible Markup Language (XML); Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Web Services Description Language (WSDL); and Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration (UDDI). Application-centric Web services enable companies to integrate business processes without the constraints of proprietary infrastructures, platforms, and operating systems.

Enabling Technologies
The key technologies and specifications that enable the orchestration of business processes as Web services include WSFL, BPML, XLANG, and ebXML. These standards together have the same significance to BPM as XML has to e-commerce.

• Web Services Flow Language (WSFL): An XML language for the description of Web services compositions as part of a business-process definition. WSFL considers two types of Web services compositions: the first type specifies an executable business process resulting in a composition that describes how to achieve a particular business goal; and the second specifies business collaboration, i.e., the interaction pattern of a collection of Web services.
• Business Process Modeling Language (BPML): An XML-based, open-standard metalanguage for the design, definition, deployment, and management of business processes that span multiple applications, corporate departments, and business partners. BPML is actually an XML schema that provides a standard way to model mission-critical business processes.

• XLANG: A Microsoft initiative, it's an XML-based language that describes the logical sequencing of business processes and their implementation by using various application services.
• Electronic Business XML (ebXML): Jointly sponsored by the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), ebXML provides a standard method to exchange business messages, conduct trading relationships, communicate data in common terms, and define and register business processes.

Business Process Management Systems (BPMS)
All the Web services servers, such as Microsoft .NET-based servers, J2EE-based application servers, integration brokers, and pure Web services servers, have to include or provide connectivity to a business process management component. This component, also known as BPMS, supports the full life cycle of process design, deployment, execution, analysis, and optimization. Any BPMS supporting Web services must provide the following (see Figure 3):

• Support long-running business processes
• Enable development of process-managed Web services
• Support Web services standards (ebXML, WSDL, WSFL, SOAP)
• Provide business-centric environment for executing and managing business processes
• Enable the creation of collaborative business services
• Provide easy integration with packaged, legacy and custom-built applications
• Provide message security and reliability

An Example of BPMS and Web Services
The retail and wholesale buyers of a supplier use an Internet portal to place orders of different goods. The portal is supported by a BPMS (either an integration broker or an application server, which provides support for business process management) that provides a business-centric environment for executing and managing business processes, such as order entry, as Web services.

The business process of order entry comprises using a third-party Web service for credit card authentication and using internal Web services to update the enterprise resource application (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) systems.

In this example, a BPMS manages a business process of order entry using Web services to loosely integrate third-party credit card authentication functionality, along with multiple internal applications. Figure 4 shows the sequence of steps.

BPMS and Web Services for B2Bi

1. Through the procurement portal, the buyer submits a purchase order containing item number, quantity, shipping address, and credit card information.
2. Company A's BPMS gets information about Company B's Web service (credit card authentication) by doing a lookup in the private UDDI registry. This private registry is used to locate all external services, in this case, a Web service used for B2Bi.

3. The location of and WSDL binding information for the Web service is sent to Company A's BPMS.
4. Company A's BPMS invokes the Web service published by Company B to authenticate the buyer's credit card. The communication is based on SOAP over the Internet.
5. Company B's system receives the Web service request and sends the credit card validation response back to Company A. The communication is based on SOAP over the Internet.

It's worth mentioning here that this communication can be based on XML standards defined for the credit card validation business process for the vertical industry to which Company A belongs. For example, if Company A belongs to the electronic components industry, the request from Company A and the response from Company B can be based on RosettaNet's PIP. Other examples of B2B XML standards include ebXML and cXML.

BPMS and Web Services for EAI

6. If the response from Company B approves the credit card, as a task of the purchase order business process Company A's BPMS gets information about the ERP, CRM, and SCM packages Web services by doing a lookup in the private UDDI registry. This registry is used for internal services, in this case Web services used for EAI. However, if the response is negative, as defined in the workflow of the business process, the BPMS of Company A may throw an exception and report it to the buyer through the portal application.

7. The location of and the WSDL binding information for the Web services published by the ERP, CRM, and SCM systems is sent to the BPMS of Company A.
8. The integration broker invokes the Web service and enters the purchase order information in the ERP, CRM, and SCM packages.

Evolving into a Process-Based Organization
To evolve into a process-based organization, a company has to analyze and design its business process, followed by implementing, monitoring, and finally optimizing processes. Web services can be the enabling technology for all of these steps. A Web services-based organization would transition from a static, structured, and predictable model to a dynamic, creative, and knowledge-based model.

A small word of advice: companies should use Web services for private processes before they start venturing to use them for public processes. Public processes pose greater risks as far as security, transaction management, auditing, and persistence are concerned.

Directly Affecting the Bottom Line
Web services enable organizations to automate business processes, helping companies realize increased efficiency and cost savings through reduced manual processes. They are the building blocks of an enterprise's business operations and can be reorganized in any number of patterns to adjust to changing business requirements and to customize and optimize business objectives, eliminating the expensive process of rebuilding the systems from scratch.

Finally, since Web services run through industry-standard protocols, they enable organizations to eliminate the need for proprietary hardware, software, and network protocols.

Gunjan Samtani, divisional vice president of information technology at UBS PaineWebber, has several years of experience in the management, design, architecture, and implementation of large-scale EAI and B2B integration projects. He's the primary author of B2B Integration: A Practical Guide to Collaborative E-Commerce
(www.worldscientific.com/
books/economics/
p263.html).