Obviously, in any industry, a given vendor will have strengths and weaknesses compared to her competitors. The BPM space being no different seems to have two opposing ends. Back-end integration and human-to-human workflow, which are met in the middle with a process language.
In theory, integration and workflow are really two sides of the same coin. But some vendors don't seem to get that point. Regardless, both ends require different technology.
On the integration end you need the ability to inspect back end systems for visible interfaces (SQL tables, WebServices, JMS queues, or EJBs). And you need a way to map data from your process context to those services and back into the process context.
On the human end, you need a work portal that supports assignment by roles and task delegation, plus a simple way to create widgets for data entry into the process context.
Note that I'm not saying; map form/widget data to a database table, or a table to a WebService. The process context here is the key, you map in and out of it, not directly from one service to another. You end up with more 'steps' in the process, but you gain tremendous flexibility.
So, there are some vendors with strong human-to-human workflow, and others with strong back-end integration. But none that I've seen with strengths in both, yet.
But the trick is to identify the vendor with the most flexible process notation. The rest will follow.
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