Apache ODE is Reaching Critical Mass

The Apache ODE project lead by Intalio is reaching critical mass, more recently with its integration by WSO2. While many more vendors are considering using Apache ODE for adding BPEL support to their products, others do not seem too happy about this momentum, among them Alex Neihaus from Active Endpoints, who is claiming that WSO2‘s Carbon BPM isn’t a product. I’m not a big fan of vendor bashing, and I certainly do not want to take any part in this silly fight, but I’m happy to answer Alex’s list of 10 reasons that make Apache ODE (or WSO2 Business Process Server, same codebase) not a BPM product. If you want BPM based on the best BPEL engine around (ODE), Intalio has it in store, and we’re open for business…

10. No worklist support
Intalio’s Tempo project does that, and it’s available under the Eclipse Public License. It’s also part of Intalio|Server, and it now includes Apache Jackrabitt (using Apache Sling) for document management. And if you want something more lightweight and do not mind writing some Ruby code, you might want to take a look at Singleshot.

9. No clustering
Intalio|Server provides support for clustering, for both load-balancing and fail-over. More advanced …

9. No clustering
Intalio|Server provides support for clustering, for both load-balancing and fail-over. More advanced clustering support for grid deployment will be part of Intalio 6.0 Beta 2, using Shoal. Support for Apache Hadoop is also being considered by the Server Team, which recently moved to new offices in San Francisco, CA (feel free to stop by).

8. No reporting
Intalio|BAM provides real-time information about the status of processes, activities, and transactions, through the definition of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and the presentation of real-time dashboards (powered by Eclipse Birt).

7. No fixing of in-flight processes
In-flight process modifications are supported through Intalio|Server‘s management console. Furthermore, Intalio|Designer makes it easy to break large and long-running processes into smaller ones, therefore enabling in-flight process re-deployment, without violating the transactional integrity of deployed processes.

6. Rudimentary monitoring
Intalio|Server provides a pretty advanced management console for process monitoring.

5. Hand-editing WSDL’s to specify where the service is hosted
Intalio|Designer makes it fully graphical and quite intuitive.

4. Installation
The entire Intalio Business Process Platform can be installed in less than 5 minutes.

3. Deployment
Process deployment from Intalio|Designer is just one mouse click away.

2. BPMN modeling
Intalio|Designer is the most advanced BPMN modeler currently available, and is based on the open source Eclipse BPMN Modeler project lead by Intalio. Nobody wants to write BPEL code by hand, but some developers might like to write SimPEL code instead. Those should take a look at Intalio’s upcoming Developer Edition.

1. Include people
Once again, Tempo and Singleshot do that pretty well.

So, here we are. BPEL is the industry standard for process execution, Apache ODE is its most reliable, scalable, and standard-compliant implementation, is available under the Apache License, and is the cornerstone of Intalio’s Business Process Platform, which itself addresses all Alex Neihaus’ points.