I am in Japan today for the Intalio User Conference, where we unveiled Intalio 6.0 for the very first time to the public. This Business Process Platform based on the COSMO model is architected around Intalio’s BPEL engine, and offers three main editions: Developer Edition, Enterprise Edition, and On Demand Edition, the later being packaged both for public clouds (like Amazon EC2) and private ones (popular with BPO vendors). Here is what it looks like.

Many new things are depicted on this diagram, and I’ll spend the next few days taking you through them. Among them, Intalio|MDM, but also the four new components that make Intalio On Demand Edition: the Online BPMN Designer, Online SimPEL Editor, Process Portal, and Mashup Templates.

The part that I like the most about this architecture is that it all revolves around the BPEL engine, used as master system of actions for all processes, whichever edition of the product you might be using. If you’re a developer (Cf. past article), you’ll likely start with Intalio Developer Edition, taking advantage of the fact that it supports the most popular programming languages currently in use. If you’re an architect or a process analyst, Intalio Enterprise Edition will be your best option moving forward, for it provides all the services you need to implement the most complex processes, in the most demanding environments. And if you’re a business analyst, or even a web developer, Intalio On Demand Edition will make it very easy for you to get started, not only for process discovery and documentation, but also for the rapid development of simple process mashups.

Essentially, all three editions are built on the same process engine, but provide unique tools for development and workflow. The Developer Edition is based on SimPEL — developed using any IDE (vi included) — and the Singleshot workflow task manager, which was developed using Ruby on Rails. The Enterprise Edition is based on the Eclipse IDE and the Tempo workflow task manager. Finally, the On Demand Edition will provide both an Online SimPEL editor (just a simple text editor with syntax highlighting really) and an Online BPMN Designer (more on this one later), and will provide support for both Singleshot and Tempo. You can start with one edition, then migrate to another, or use all three at once, should your team be made of business analysts, process analysts, and software engineers working together to achieve a common goal.

If BPM 1.0 was about bringing business and IT together, BPM 2.0 (and Intalio 6.0) is about bringing everybody around the same table (or process engine), and giving them the tools they need to get things done, while best leveraging their unique skills. This is what a true platform should be, and we’ve never been so close to the goal.