It all started with a simple suggestion: Rename the “BPM and Workflow” forum to “SAP Business Workflow”, but quickly grew far beyond a forum name or even Workflow. The reason for the suggestion was because a) the Workflow content mushroomed to obscure most other content, and b) to avoid confusion because the term BPM has several meanings. This was further exacerbated when Project Galaxy was officially unveiled as “SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management” earlier this year. The fact I made the suggestion early in July and it was only resolved now gives an indication of the debate it sparked off.

The point of this blog is twofold: An announcement of the outcome, and - perhaps more importantly - to explain the different contexts side by side in which one can refer to “BPM” in order to help people understand what is being talked about.

So for the first part, the announcement (cue trumpets and fanfare): The “BPM and Workflow” forum is now known as simply “Workflow” and covers SAP Business Workflow and related technologies such as Universal Worklist (UWL), Collaboration Tasks. A new forum Business Process Management (BPM) has been created for the new SAP NetWeaver BPM product (formerly known under the codename Galaxy) and related technologies such as ARIS, SAP Solution Manager and Guided Procedures.

Right, that’s the easy part out of the way. I will not go into much detail on what the products do – enough has already been written about that – but I shall try to explain the difference between the different BPM terminologies:

• For the first definition, let’s start at the top with BPM as a generic concept encompassing SAP and non-SAP systems alike: Business Process Management is a methodology, philosophy and technology. Gartner defines it as something that "provides governance of a business's process environment to improve agility and operational performance" and talks about a "a structured BPM approach employing methods, policies, metrics, and software tools to continuously optimize an organization's activities and processes.". There are many tools and technologies to assist with this task, from modelling business processes to managing their execution.
  
  In the SAP world, we are usually concenred with different aspects of BPM: Methodology, Governance, Certification, Technology; and we have several different tools to address these. Thus a generic reference to “BPM” in an SAP context can mean any or all of these: SAP Business Workflow, ccBPM as part of PI (formerly known as XI), SAP Enterprise Modelling Applications by IDS Scheer (ARIS), SAP NetWeaver  Business Process Management (new), SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management (new).

• Cross-component Business Process Management (cross-component BPM, or ccBPM) is a specific BPM tool that forms part of PI/XI. However it is sometimes informally abbreviated one step further, becoming BPM - particularly in PI circles. This is where the trouble started: we need to differentiate between BPM as an umbrella term and BPM as a specific tool. SAP Business Workflow is another BPM tool, thankfully with a different name. Broadly speaking, PI and Workflow are similar, however PI manages mainly system to system processes whereas SAP Business Workflow usually manages process where people are involved: people to people and people to systems.

• As already previously mentioned, SAP’s newest product in the BPM area is SAP NetWeaver Business Process Management or SAP NetWeaver BPM for short. Coupled with SAP NetWeaver Business Rules Management, the two products are conceptually very similar to SAP Business Workflow. However they run on different platforms, are completly incompatible and are also targeted at different uses. Whilst Workflow is more of a technology solution for managing a company’s core business processes, NetWeaver BPM is higher level and in some ways more of a BPX tool. It is neither a replacement for Workflow nor an evolution thereof, but a new product. Think ABAP Reports versus APAB Query; or BSP versus Web Dynpro. Each does something similar but in a different way and is suited for different applications.