Chapter 6. Process Execution with BPMN and BPEL

An important success factor for enterprises is their adaptability to the changing market conditions. The increasing transparency of the market and increased customer requirements require an efficient organization of business processes. Both past and present are, however, predominantly coined from rigid application monoliths, which support these technical process cycles only insufficiently. This prevents one-time, near-market adjustments since the IT cannot adapt itself fast and flexibly enough to changed processes. In this context, we frequently hear about the "business's execution gap"—the gap between the ever rapidly changing business requirements and the supporting information systems.

In order to become agile in a constantly changing market environment, many enterprises feel compelled to restructure the existing IT systems. While conventional application architectures are rather technically aligned, the approach...