Hoping to put in place the last missing piece of the Java stack, Gluecode Software and the Apache Software Foundation this week unwrapped Project Agila, which the companies claim is the first embeddable open source BPM engine.
Gluecode's contribution to the project provides usable code that can be plugged in to existing applications, thereby giving enterprise users access to core BPM technology that has for the most part been pricey and proprietary, company officials claimed. The engine is designed to be used with both lower-end platforms such as J2ME and in large J2EE deployments, they said.
"There has been a long forecast that Apache some day would have a full middleware stack equivalent to BEA and IBM. BPM is the last [major] piece that needed to be completed," said Winston Damarillo, Gluecode's CEO.
A BPM engine is crucial for building open source solutions, he said. "The integration point in middleware is not only driven by logic and EJBs. It needs to be orchestrated and managed by a BPM engine, because [users] are thinking about independent services, which is what Web services brings," Damarillo said.
Some analysts agree that BPM engines are becoming front-of-mind for developers working in open source.
"In terms of its value in the [Java] stack, process management is becoming extremely high. It will go head-to-head with the app stacks of traditional server vendors, who have already started to respond by focusing more on the integration side and modeling side," said Nat Palmer, chief analyst at Delphi Group.
Project Agila also contains a simplified XML document format for workflow specification, basic administration, user management, task lists, and notification services. After the code has gone through Apache's Incubator program, the finished version will be ready to ship under the Apache 2.0 license.
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