Executing business processes across organizational lines – whether across two companies or multiple departments of the same company is a timely topic for many reasons: The bottom line is that the more organizations can automate their processes and interactions, the lower their cost of doing business. In the past, there were many impediments to automating business processes. Just getting organizations to connect their dissimilar systems was a substantial effort. There were protocol and security issues associated with such direct connections. Making changes to systems at either end could make such connections inoperable. In most cases, there are dependencies on the existing IT systems as well as territorial issues that create inertia to changing existing systems.
The solution to executing business processes across organizational lines has to include the requirement that existing systems and communication methods should not need to be changed. Rather, any business process execution related infrastructure has to be built on top of existing IT and communication infrastructure. In this, the BPEL does an excellent job.
