OMG Members Adopt Business Process Modeling Notation 2.0
Popular business modeling specification BPMN 2.0 has broad industry support

Needham, MA, USA - December 18, 2009 - OMG™ has approved the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN™) 2.0 specification beta submission. OMG's Board of Directors approved the specification at the OMG Technical Meeting held in San Antonio, TX in September 2009. The finalization process for BPMN 2.0 is underway and the final version of the specification is expected to be adopted in mid 2010.

The initial version of BPMN provided a graphical notation for specifying and documenting business processes with an emphasis on defining "orchestration processes." BPMN 1.x has been broadly adopted by the industry. OMG lists more than 60 implementations. However, BPMN 1.x did not define an interchange format to allow users to exchange models in a standard way between different tools nor did it include a native executable format. The BPMN 2.0 beta specification addresses these and improves on the original specification. BPMN 2.0 includes major new functional additions including collaborative process modeling, choreography in addition to execution support. A common file format assures interoperability between BPMN tools in a multi-vendor environment and helps to facilitate tighter alignment between business and IT. The Beta version of the specification is available now for early implementations.

BPMN 2.0 is already well supported by the industry. Submitters and supporters of BPMN 2.0 include Axway, Accenture, Active Endpoints, Adaptive, BizAgi, Bruce Silver Associates, Capgemini, Enterprise Agility, France Telecom, IDS Scheer, Insubria University, Intalio, IBM, MEGA International, Metastorm, Model Driven Solutions, Nortel, Oracle, Red Hat Software, SAP AG, Software AG, TIBCO Software, Unisys, and Vangent. BPMN 2.0 supporting tools are expected to become available in 2010.

"BPMN is one of the most widely adopted modeling standards for business analysis," said Richard Mark Soley, Ph.D., Chairman and CEO, OMG. "It addresses the entire range of business modeling, from people, to systems to analytics and intelligence. As stewards of this important and popular specification, it is important for us to respond to changing market requirements and advancing technology by maintaining BPMN and keeping it current as user and vendor needs evolve."

"The approval of BPMN 2.0 as an OMG standard is a significant step forward for business process management solutions. The new specification addresses requirements our customers have to facilitate collaboration with multi-role enterprise class modeling, enable choreography across different process owners and improve alignment with execution environments," said Karla Norsworthy, VP of Standards, IBM. "BPMN 2.0 will accelerate the adoption of business process management tools and methodologies, which will in turn drive even more value from continuous process optimization techniques used within enterprises. IBM is providing initial support for BPMN 2.0 in WebSphere Business Modeler 7.0. We're very pleased to see the wide industry support from other OMG members."

"Oracle customers and partners have been anxiously awaiting both a native execution format for BPMN and a standardized tool interchange format," said Dave Shaffer, Vice President Product Management, Oracle. "Due to the highly collaborative nature of BPM, and the current heterogeneous nature of products required, we believe customer adoption of the BPMN 2.0 standard should be rapid and the Beta release of the standard is a great step forward for vendors and customers."

"SAP is committed to industry standards, both in terms of their adoption and further development," said Wolfgang Hilpert, senior vice president, Solution Management, SOA and BPM, SAP. "It is exciting to see how BPMN has evolved. This version in an important step forward as it supports critical requirements of business and technical users. We believe that BPMN, which is used as the base for SAP NetWeaver BPM, will become a common notation for business processes."

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About OMG
OMG is an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry consortium that in 2009 is celebrating its 20^th Anniversary. OMG Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies, including: Real-time, Embedded and Specialized Systems, Analysis & Design, Architecture-Driven Modernization and Middleware and an even wider range of industries, including: Business Modeling and Integration, C4I, Finance, Government, Green Computing, Healthcare, Insurance, Legal Compliance, Life Sciences Research, Manufacturing Technology, Robotics, Software-Based Communications and Space.

OMG’s modeling standards, including the Unified Modeling Language™ (UML^®) and Model Driven Architecture^® (MDA^®), enable powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes, including IT Systems Modeling and Business Process Management. OMG’s middleware standards and profiles are based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA^®) and support a wide variety of industries.

More information about OMG can be found at www.omg.org.  OMG is headquartered in Needham, MA, USA.

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Edited by Stephanie