Members Approve OASIS ebXML Business Process (ebBP) as OASIS Standard

["Carol Geyer" <carol.geyer@oasis-open.org>]

**Link to this press release at
http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis-news-2007-01-16.php

Members Approve OASIS ebXML Business Process (ebBP) as OASIS Standard

Axway, Dell, Fujitsu, Sun Microsystems, and Others Collaborate to Advance
Royalty-Free Standard for e-Business Collaboration

Boston, MA, USA; 16 January 2007 - OASIS, the international standards
consortium, today announced that its members have approved the ebXML Business
Process Specification Schema (ebXML BPSS or ebBP) version 2.0.4 as an OASIS
Standard, a status that signifies the highest level of ratification. ebXML BPSS
defines a business process foundation that promotes the automation and
predictable exchange of business collaboration definitions using XML.

ebBP supports robust business process methods as part of an collaborative
processes among business partners using business transactions in the eBusiness
domain or between collaborating parties. The ebBP design is based on the actual
needs of eBusiness users around the globe-many of whom provided domain
expertise and business requirements to the OASIS Technical Committee.
Collaborations supported by ebBP are easily manageable and fully traceable.

"ebBP defines an open-architecture for a collaborative business process module
that's freely available and compatible with the 2.0 suite of ebXML OASIS
Standards (ISO 15000) and many rules, notations, Web services, EDI, BPMN, and
other prevalent specifications and systems," said Monica Martin of Sun
Microsystems, co-chair of the OASIS ebXML Business Process Technical Committee.
"ebBP is royalty-free and infrastructure agnostic."

The ebBP is part of the ebXML (Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup
Language) suite of specifications. The original ebXML project was initiated in
1999 by OASIS and the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and
Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), in an effort to enable enterprises of any size
and in any location to conduct business over the Internet. In addition to
business processes, the original framework defined four layers of substantive
data specifications, including standards for core data components,
collaboration protocol agreements, messaging, and registries and repositories.
Five other ebXML specifications, including four OASIS Standards and one
UN/CEFACT recommendation, were approved by ISO in 2004. Today, these
specifications, including the ebBP, work effectively with and have been
integrated to use other emerging technology specifications to meet evolving
eBusiness requirements.

"In BPSS version 1.0, we laid the groundwork for multi-party collaborations,
but at that time, contractual obligations, security and identity, and
implementations requirements were only partially understood. Since then, the
industry's appreciation of how business collaborations can be implemented
electronically has increased dramatically," noted Dale Moberg of Axway,
co-chair of the OASIS ebXML Business Process Technical Committee. "ebBP stands
today as the most advanced business standard in the industry in developing
business collaborations such as multi-party."

"In keeping with the goals of the original ebXML project, ebBP remains free and
openly available for all to use. It is vendor- and geography-neutral," noted
Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS. "The ebBP OASIS Standard provides
the bridge between eBusiness process modeling and the execution of eBusiness
software components."

Axway, the ENEA Italian State research organization, and Fujitsu all verified
successful implementations of ebBP. An open source editor, freebxmlbp, has been
developed by the Middle East Technical University (METU).

"The ebBP OASIS Standard is a powerful tool for enabling the typical European
large networks of small and medium enterprises to formalize a common model of
business collaboration in a more efficient and transparent way," said Cristiano
Novelli, researcher at Italy's ENEA. The agency, which focuses on new
technology, energy and the environment, plans to foster the adoption of ebBP in
activities related to technology transfer and innovation in the local
industrial districts of Italy.

Participation in the OASIS ebXML Business Process Technical Committee remains
open to new or existing OASIS members. OASIS hosts an open mail list for public
comment and the ebxml-dev mailing list for exchanging information on
implementing the standard.

Support for ebBP

Axway
"The business process models of ebXML have a distinctive abstraction level that
promotes neutral specifications of business collaboration logic, whatever
implementation approach is used in collaboration plumbing. The result is that
industry end users can distribute ebBP business process models and preserve
their investment, whether their communities use basic file exchange, messaging,
and/or SOAP-based implementation architectures. In addition to expressing the
basic data exchange contracts, ebBP allows analysts and end users to specify
specific quality of service contracts covering reliability, security, and
expected exception notifications or positive acknowledgements. ebXML
choreographies can be combined with any internal integration technology or
internal business activity description," said Dave Bennett, CTO, Axway.

Sun Microsystems
"With the advent of global computing standards such as XML and HTTP, businesses
have been able to create business collaborations previously unattainable. As
these collaborations grow in complexity, additional specifications are required
to describe the patterns of interactions between the multiple partners
involved. The ebBP or ebXML BPSS OASIS Standard defines this type of
collaboration, and we at Sun expect that, combined with other standards, it
will enable continued advancement in the eBusiness domain and for SOA," said
Dale Ferrario, VP, SOA - Business Integration, Sun Microsystems.


Additional information

OASIS ebXML Business Process Technical Committee:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ebxml-bp

ebBP FAQ:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ebxml-bp/faq.php


About OASIS

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) is
a not-for-profit, international consortium that drives the development,
convergence, and adoption of e-business standards. Members themselves set the
OASIS technical agenda, using a lightweight, open process expressly designed to
promote industry consensus and unite disparate efforts. The consortium produces
open standards for Web services, security, e-business, and standardization
efforts in the public sector and for application-specific markets. Founded in
1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600
organizations and individual members in 100 countries. Approved OASIS Standards
include AVDL, BCM, CAP, DITA, DocBook, DSML, ebXML CPPA, ebXML Messaging, ebXML
Registry, EDXL-DE, EML, OpenDocument, SAML, SPML, UBL, UDDI, WSDM,
WS-Reliability, WSRF, WSRP, WS-Security, XACML, XCBF, and XML Catalogs.
http://www.oasis-open.org


Press contact:

Carol Geyer Director of Communications, OASIS
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.978.667.5115 x209
_________________________________
Carol Geyer
Director of Communications
OASIS
+1.978.667.5115 x209 


OASIS Symposium:
"eBusiness and Open Standards: 
Understanding the Facts, Fiction, and Future"
15-18 April 2007 San Diego, CA USA
http://www.oasis-open.org/events/symposium/