It has been a long-felt requirement to have tools available for supporting the company’s business operation that provide the ability for business professionals to implement and modify the business processes that run in IT systems, without any programming expertise. In other words this is a requirement to put an end to the normally wide gap between the information technology area and the business area. Unfortunately the current technology hasn’t reached this level, yet (maybe it never will) but technology vendors by all means strive to develop tools and standards to minimize this gap. To this end the two most important, generally accepted standards are the BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) and the XPDL (XML Process Definition Language) and the most sophisticated tool is BPMS (Business Process Management Suite).
One of the most consistent BPMS implementation on the market is BEA Systems’ AquaLogic BPM Suite product that supports the management of the entire business process lifecycle in unified environments. This means that it provides support for each of the individual process lifecycle phases (assessment/design, implementation, installation/running, monitoring/feedback) in a manner that the transition between the individual phases takes place very simply. In the following parts we give an overview of what components AquaLogic BPM Suite provides support for it.

Analysis and design
The tool deployed by business analysts for process design is AquaLogic BPM Designer. The Designer offers a graphic platform for process design and it supports the UML and BPMN modelling standards at a display level. Analysts are able to design and simulate the processes in the tool, without writing codes or having a thorough knowledge of IT systems. The Designer is capable of storing process models in two XML-based standard process definition languages.  
If the purpose of the process is Web Service Orchestration, then BPEL 1.1 processes can be deployed. These processes typically implement non-workflow type of activities.  
If the purpose is choreography implementation of workflows, then XPDL 2.0 definition language may be used. XPDL is a widely deployed standard language specifically created for workflows implementation.

Implementation
When the process becomes full-fledged from a business point of view, it is transferred to the IT area, where developers implement it in the AquaLogic BPM Studio. Practically two tools, Designer and Studio represent the basis of close collaboration between the business area and the IT area.  
The process model is transferred from Designer to Studio in either BPEL or XPDL format. This is the model that is supplemented / implemented in Studio in an unchanged format. The great advantage of Studio is that user platforms that form an integral part of the business processes, the so-called page flows or screen flows can be developed in the same tool, thus the entire developed business process can be fully visible and quickly modified.

Installation and running
Processes are run on the AquaLogic BPM Enterprise Server. The run environment of processes implemented in Studio creates a J2EE application from the processes in BPEL or XPDL format that are exported from Studio and these can be run on several, standard J2EE 1.4 compatible application servers (WebSphere, WebLogic). For business processes users, the component also offers a Web user platform that can be operated as an independent Web application as well, but can be integrated into any standard portal server as a JSR68 portlet.

Business activity monitoring
One of the major benefits of BPM tools is that they facilitate the monitoring of business processes. On the one hand we can get a picture of the enterprise’s business operation from the data and statistics provided by monitoring, and on the other hand we can detect errors or bottlenecks in our business processes. These pieces of information then can provide feedback for the process design phase, where business processes can be adequately modified and optimized. Two tools are available to support this function.  
One is AquaLogic BPM Manager, by the deployment of which real-time monitoring and intervention (suspension, termination, etc.) of running business processes becomes possible. The other one is AquaLogic BPM Dashboard that facilitates the analysis and display of historic data of the processes that have been run.
Business users may set KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) for the processes that are stored by the tool while the processes run. Statistics can be created from these data (e.g. the number of successful/unsuccessful processes, runtime and averages of processes or process parts, etc.).