Progress Software does a 180… and goes back to the future?

[Cringer]

Just been passed this link by my IT manager. Interesting reading apparently. Can someone put it in plain English?

http://www.it-director.com/blogs/MWD_Advisors/2012/4/progress_software_does_a_180_and_g_.html

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

Thanks for the heads-up Cringer, I missed that yesterday. Big news. Glad we decided not to invest in integrating BPM into our application.

And obviously, good to see the renewed focus on OE. Should make for some very lively discussion at PCA.

 

[Cringer]

I think I understand things a bit more now I've read the Press Release. Is this bad news for Progress do you think? Do you think it means as a company they are running into trouble?

 

[tamhas]

More info here


http://www.progress.com/en/inthenews/progress-announces-s-58698.html

http://tinyurl.com/6mwohwy

No, I don't think it is trouble, but rather a desire to create focus and clear direction instead of a whole family of dubiously related applications.

Rob, you still should implement BPM ... it is the right thing to do.

My hope is that this will lead to:

For Sonic, the adapter will be opened up and lead to high quality adapters for any one of a number of MOMs and ESBs.

For BPM, there will remain an awareness that BPM is the right thing to do and, at the least, there will be a friendly exchange remain with Savvion to make implementation easy, but possibly supporting other BPM engines as well.

For Actional, the only real connection is Actional's support of OpenEdge components like AppServers and I don't see that going away.

 

[Rob Fitzpatrick]

I don't think this is bad news per se. It looks to me like a new CEO coming in and stamping his direction on the company. Personally I like what I see so far. In recent years I did get tired of going to the Progress web site and seeing absolutely no mention of OpenEdge. I won't miss the products that are going away; most were just names to me. We have a bit of Sonic use, but there are good alternatives in the market.

Thomas, whether we do or don't pursue BPM isn't my call personally. We did evaluate it, had Progress in for the dog & pony show. It looked interesting, although being dragged into it blind it took me a while to get my head around what it was and what the integration points were with OE. It was early on, so it looked a bit kludgy. My feeling at the time was that it felt like a solution in search of a problem.

I think business process management, as a general concept, is a good thing in isolation. We all have processes and being able to model them visually is an interesting way to document them. But I'm not yet convinced that it's so essential that every application should be BPM-enabled. Certainly some apps are heavily workflow-oriented and could benefit from that. But for OLTP I don't see a pressing need, or a value proposition.

Anyway, interesting days ahead.

 

[tamhas]

Word is that OE BPM will be preserved. Exactly what that means is not yet clear.

 

[durkadurka]

What is BPM supposed to be, anyway? The Wikipedia entry uses so many enterpisey buzzwords my head is spinning. I'm surprised "synergy" isn't in there somewhere. I'm guessing it uses some type of Markov chain engine internally to generate long strings of English sentences that make grammatical sense but don't really mean anything. Maybe they should rename it EBM - Enterprise Bowel Movement?

 

[tamhas]

If you would look at the Savvion portion of the Progress web site, you would get a good idea instead of bad jokes.

OE BPM will be preserved, but exactly what that means is still unclear.