OASIS Members Form Web Services Business Process Execution Language (WSBPEL) Technical Committee

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

OASIS Members Form Web Services Business Process Execution Language
(WSBPEL) Technical Committee

Boston, MA, USA; 29 April -- Members of the OASIS open standards
consortium will advance a specification to formally describe
interoperable business processes and business interaction protocols for
Web services orchestration. The new OASIS Web Services Business Process
Execution Language (WSBPEL) Technical Committee will continue work on
the Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (BPEL4WS)
specification, an XML-based language that allows users to describe
business process activities as Web services and define how they can be
connected to accomplish specific tasks.

BEA, IBM, Microsoft, and SAP intend to formally submit BPEL4WS version
1.1 under royalty free terms to the new OASIS Technical Committee at its
first meeting on 16 May 2003. The committee is open to submissions of
other in-scope contributions  and will establish liaison relationships
with related Web services efforts within OASIS and other standards
organizations including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Ted Schadler, analyst at Forrester Research, described the move as good
news for firms focused on Web services. "The co-authors rightfully view
customer adoption as the most important hurdle in making a business
process standard meaningful--and that means ubiquitous ISV support. So
they're submitting this spec under a royalty-free license, permitting
any ISV to use it without cost," (from "BPEL4WS: The Right Web Services
Process Standard," 15 April 2003, Forrester Research, Inc.).

"To solve real-life business problems, companies may need to invoke
multiple Web services applications inside their firewalls and across
networks to communicate with their customers, partners, and suppliers,"
said Diane Jordan of IBM, co-chair of the OASIS WSBPEL Technical
Committee. "BPEL4WS allows you to sequence and coordinate internal and
external Web services to accomplish your business tasks. Thus, the
result of one Web service can influence which Web service gets called
next, and successful completion of multiple Web services in a process
can be coordinated."

John Evdemon of Microsoft, co-chair of the OASIS WSBPEL Technical
Committee, added, "The participants in this Technical Committee are
committed to building and delivering standards-based interoperable Web
services solutions to meet customer requirements. Business processes are
potentially very complex and require a long series of time- and
data-dependent interactions. However, BPEL4WS allows companies to
describe sequential interactions and exception handling in a standard,
interoperable way that can be shared across platforms, applications,
transports and protocols."

OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee members include Booz Allen Hamilton,
BEA Systems, Commerce One, E2open, EDS, IBM, Microsoft, NEC, Novell,
SAP, SeeBeyond, Sybase, Tibco Software, Vignette, Waveset, and others.
Participation remains open toall organizations and individuals, and
OASIS encourages both vendors of business process automation software as
well as end users interested in automating and integrating their
internal or external business processes to join this effort. OASIS will
host an open mail list for public comment.

"Through OASIS, a large group of organizations are joining together to
further the evolution of BPEL4WS from specification to standard--within
the context of an open, publicly vetted process. Active participation
from the OASIS membership at-large, which includes many business process
solution vendors as well as customers, will provide valuable input on
usage cases and implementation scenarios that will result in the
broadest possible industry adoption," commented Karl Best, vice
president of OASIS. "We plan to work closely with organizations such
W3C, UN/CEFACT, and others in completing the 'big picture' of Web
services."

"W3C's members believe coordination is vital to ensure the delivery of
timely and thorough technical solutions that truly meet the needs of
customers, especially in the area of Web services," explained Steve
Bratt, Chief Operating Officer for W3C. "To that end, W3C's Web Services
Choreography Working Group has invited representatives of the OASIS
WSBPEL Technical Committee to attend its second face-to-face meeting in
June. We look forward to building on the technical coordination already
established between OASIS Technical Committees and W3C Working Groups."


About OASIS (http://www.oasis-open.org)

OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information
Standards) is a not-for-profit, global 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. OASIS produces worldwide standards for Web services,
security, XML conformance, business transactions, electronic publishing,
topic maps and interoperability within and between marketplaces. Founded
in 1993, OASIS has more than 2,000 participants representing over 600
organizations and individual members in 100 countries.


Additional information:

OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=wsbpel

Cover Pages Technology Report: Business Process Management and
Choreography:
http://xml.coverpages.org/bpm.html


Press contact:

Carol Geyer
OASIS Director of Communications
carol.geyer@oasis-open.org
+1.941.284.0403





Industry Support for the OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee:

BEA Systems:
"The submission of BPEL4WS to the OASIS standards process reflects the
growing importance of high level XML-based business integration," said
Edward Cobb, VP of Architecture and Standards, BEA Systems. "Such
standards will have broad impact on enterprise computing environments.
BEA supports the convergence of the computing industry toward a single
model for expression of business processes and looks forward to
continued contributions to the OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee."

EDS:
"As more and more companies work to streamline their supply chain and
open new distribution channels, process management optimization will be
an increasingly critical factor. EDS sees business process orchestration
as being near the top of the integration stack in terms of the value
that it can provide to clients," said Waqar Sadiq, EIT ESAI enterprise
consultant for EDS.

NEC
"NEC believes that having a standardized business process language will
benefit all parties concerned in creating dependable business solutions
by interlinking Web services," said Yutaka Kasahara, general manager,
Internet Solution Platform Development Division, NEC Corporation. "NEC
is pleased to be a part of the OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee and to
contribute our expertise in building mission critical enterprise
systems."

Novell:
"Through its acquisition of SilverStream Software, Novell was the first
vendor to provide a commercially available WSFL-based Business Process
Manager--a predecessor to BPEL," said Winston Bumpus, Novell's director
of standards. "Largely based on WSFL and XLang, BPEL improves on
existing workflow architectures by promoting an intuitive process model
and native integration with complementary Web services standards such as
SOAP and WSDL.  Novell's  support of BPEL underscores the company's
commitment to providing visual tools based on industry standards that
increase developer productivity, and therefore we are pleased to see
this important work released to OASIS."

SAP:
"SAP is excited to co-author BPEL4WS 1.1 and actively support the
corresponding standardization efforts at OASIS," said Sinisa Zimek,
Director Technology Architecture & Standards at SAP. "More than 19,000
of our customers could benefit from such a business process standard and
the interoperability it would enable. SAP will now focus on the delivery
of the specification and work to provide the industry with strategic
direction to drive adoption of these technologies."

SeeBeyond
"SeeBeyond works with all of the major standards organizations to
support the deployment of open solutions, and we will continue to
participate in the further development of this important specification
to meet our customers' integration and BPM needs," said Alan Davies,
vice president of standards for SeeBeyond. "It is especially beneficial
when competing technologies can be merged through open standards, and
with SeeBeyond's experience in integrating enterprise systems for over a
decade, we believe WSBPEL will provide greater interoperability between
disparate systems to both accelerate and complement the adoption of
business process management solutions."

Sybase:
"The submission of BPEL4WS version 1.1 to OASIS is the critical first
step toward wide-scale adoption of an open Web services orchestration
standard," said Peter Hoversten, chief technology officer for Sybase,
Inc. "The royalty-free nature of the submission shows that this standard
is intended to benefit the technology community as a whole. Sybase is
pleased be a co-proposer of the OASIS WSBPEL Technical Committee in
actively working towards the specification adoption, integration with
other standards, and use as a business process driver within our own
products."

Waveset Technologies:
"The standardization of a single encompassing workflow and business
process definition language is an essential. Waveset's identity
management solutions use an XML-based workflow engine for coordinated
process control and workflow, seamlessly integrating business process
requests and approvals into an overall identity management
infrastructure. As a result, WSBPEL will become a key component of our
standards-based architecture," said Darran Rolls, Waveset Technologies.