Active Endpoints announced the general availability of ActiveVOS 6.0, an all-in-one, standards-based orchestration and business process management system that permits Java developers, business analysts, and enterprise architects to automate business processes, collaborate across IT and business boundaries, control the overall state of the business and adapt rapidly and easily to changes in the business that require new or updated applications.

ActiveVOS 6.0 offers a stark contrast to SOA “stack” products which require users to assemble a complicated puzzle from piece parts before any applications can be built. ActiveVOS 6.0 combines integrated process modeling; an extensive design, testing, debugging and deployment environment; reporting and consoling for operations staff and end users; and a tightly-integrated complex event processing engine into one easy-to-use system. And, ActiveVOS 6.0 integrates these technologies while retaining 100% compliance with all major open standards. As a result, ActiveVOS 6.0 frees developers, architects and companies from the cost and complexity of proprietary systems. Standards implemented in ActiveVOS 6.0 include Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN), Business Process Execution Language (BPEL) and human task management via the BPEL4People and WS-Human Task specifications.

“With ActiveVOS 6.0, Active Endpoints has finally achieved what companies and Java developers have been waiting for,” said Mark Taber, CEO, Active Endpoints. “Now, enterprises no longer have to focus on building expensive, theoretical application infrastructures. Instead, they can simply begin to do what they have longed to do: create services-based applications. ActiveVOS 6.0 is unique because it delivers everything developers, business analysts, architects and operations staff need to develop SOA-based applications right away.”

“ActiveVOS 6.0 helps elevate SOA investments and developer knowledge to the level of business process outcomes,” said Dana Gardner, principal analyst, Interarbor Solutions. “By focusing on practical, visual tools for creating services-based applications -- and integrating many process orchestration features into a single product -- ActiveVOS 6.0 accelerates the productivity returns of process-centric applications. The market clearly needs to better empower enterprises and developers to reap business-level rewards from their IT systems and assets, especially as they examine and invest in services-oriented architecture.”

An Open Business Process Management System Everyone Can Use
ActiveVOS 6.0 offers business analysts and developers a new way to collaborate and to create applications. Analysts can import models and documentation of existing applications, including Microsoft Visio drawings, directly into the graphical ActiveVOS 6.0 BPMN designer. In this way, analysts can easily document existing business processes and create new processes using a standards-based designer. BPMN models are automatically transformed to executable BPEL, allowing developers to provide the implementation details necessary to turn the logical model into a running application. BPEL processes can also be transformed into BPMN, allowing the developer to document existing processes for analysts.

ActiveVOS 6.0 supports very sophisticated deployment capabilities. ActiveVOS 6.0 permits developers to reuse plain old Java objects (POJOs) as native web services. Processes can be thoroughly tested and simulated in ActiveVOS 6.0 even when there are no actual services available during the testing phase. Flexible deployment options allow processes to be versioned and allow for the specification of policies dictating what the system should do when a specific service is unavailable in production. Because ActiveVOS 6.0 BPEL processes run “on the metal” as native XML applications, scalability is assured.

Most importantly, because ActiveVOS 6.0 is rigorously standards-based, SOA applications do not run on proprietary engines. ActiveVOS 6.0 is unique in its ability to go from design to execution without the need for custom code at execution time.

Democratizing Complex Event Processing
CEP has emerged as an exciting new way to extend services-based applications. But until ActiveVOS 6.0, it has required users to integrate yet another server into their applications and to manage the complexity of integrating the application with the CEP engine. ActiveVOS 6.0 eliminates this challenge by providing a fully-capable CEP engine in ActiveVOS 6.0. Users simply select which events generated by the execution engine should trigger CEP events. And, these selections are made at deployment time, meaning that developers can easily add or modify CEP capabilities to running applications at will. CEP statements are written in a SQL-like language that is quickly learned and delivers all the capabilities of a dedicated CEP server. ActiveVOS 6.0 is the first system to make CEP broadly available to Java developers and will result in an explosion of applications utilizing this technology. For example, a CEP “waiting room” health care application could monitor waiting patient status, detect backups or overflows and take actions to solve the problem. Or, in a manufacturing company, a CEP application could respond to quality information by initiating an engineering change process or modifying one already that has already been started with new information.

Reporting and Consoles Deliver the View of the Forest As Well as the Trees
ActiveVOS supports the needs of operations staff and management with dashboards, integrated reporting and a universal console. Using BIRT-based dashboards, reporting and graphing, business analysts and end users can easily improve decision making. Questions like, “How much?” and “How often?” and “Are we slowing down or speeding up?” are answered directly and in detail by ActiveVOS 6.0. Custom reports can be added directly to the ActiveVOS 6.0 console.

For operations staff, ActiveVOS 6.0 delivers the tools they need to ensure uninterrupted service. A single unified console provides detailed process, task and server monitoring. A groundbreaking “time machine” root-cause analysis capability allows operations staff to graphically step back in time in a specific process to determine why a process has faulted. For example, an email service might have been unavailable. Using the time machine capability, operations staff can quickly identify the problem and the conditions that lead to it. The extensive process exception management system then allows them to correct the process to resolve the underlying problem and allow it to continue to completion.

For more information on Active Endpoints or ActiveVOS contact Alex Neihaus, alex.neihaus@activevos.com at Active Endpoints.

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