BPM and ECM: The war that never was!
Today I read a very well written and entertaining post from Adam Deane, titled “BPM and ECM – The War Begins”
Unfortunately it’s the “Dad’s Army” (aka the vendors…) view of the war. In the real world (Line-of-business) ECM and BPM have made peace years ago and for the last 20 years there have been very few ECM implementations without process elements, and vice-verse, very few BPM implementations that don’t involve documents, forms, images, or other forms of interaction with the knowledge workers and the customers. The only “pure-play” BPM solutions that don’t involve elements of ECM are straight-through-processing and application integration projects.
The “war” Adam is describing is a SuperMarket war: Inevitably you need to eat both protein and fruit… Will you buy your ECM and BPM rations from IBM, Oracle, EMC, Microsoft, your local FairTrade Co-op (is that Alfresco?) Or will you support the local economy by shopping at the smaller local pure-play traders buying separately from the butcher’s, the baker’s and the greengrocer’s?
As a consumer, it’s always good to have a choice! 
George
I am an ECM Strategist, Social Media explorer and amateur photographer. Professionally, I have been involved with Document Management, Process Management and ECM for the last 20+ years. I work for IBM Software, although the views here are my own and not those of my employer. 
