Will vendors finally force SOA and BPM to mingle?

In the wake of Software AG's acquisition of IDS-Scheer, Dana Gardner raised this question at a recent BriefingsDirect podcast: "Is the SOA landscape is being driven by folks trying to do it all?" As he put it: "I thought the whole notion of SOA was being able to include more players and more components to interact and interoperate. What's going on?"

SOA-BPM merger is inevitable, but is not being rushed

There's been a trend toward consolidations and acquisitions in which vendors are scooping up or adding capabilities in hopes of being able to offer end-to-end SOA suites. Of course, Dana is right, in that the whole idea of SOA is independence from these catch-all solutions, and being able to pick and choose, swap in and swap out interchangeable solutions as needed.

What caught the panel's attention with the Software AG-IDS Scheer acquisition was the possibility that vendors may start forcing business process management solutions into that end-to-end SOA mix as well. However, in this case, it's likely that Software AG may keep BPM focused on the BPM side of its product line.

For example, Jason Bloomberg, who joined the panel, pointed out that the acquisition itself actually had little to do with SOA. "With the IDS Scheer acquisition, if you read through what Software AG is saying about this, they're not connecting it with their SOA story. This is part of their BPM story. This is a way for them to build their vertical BPM expertise. That's the missing piece."

It may take time for the SOA and BPM worlds to come together anyway. It's like the separate Francophone and Anglophone cultures that exist in Canada; the Scotts, Welsh, English, and Irish in the UK; the Flemish and Francophones in Belgium; or the residents of North and South New Jersey. They'll all agree to exist under one roof, but that's about it -- they still want their own ways of doing things.

But as Tony Baer put it, there's a new emerging element that may force the BPMers and SOAphones to talk, at least a bit: "There has always been a huge cultural divide between the business folks, who felt that they own BPM, versus the IT folks, who own the architecture or the technology architecture, which would be SOA. What’s really interesting and what's going to stir up the pot some more -- and this is still on the horizon -- is BPMN 2.0, which is supposed to support direct execution."

Until then, we can conclude that it's not likely we'll be seeing a lot of BPM stuff being shoe-horned into SOA suites. But, it is inevitable that SOA will rely more on BPM; and BPM will rely more on SOA. It's inevitable.