Collaborative Business Process Management through Harmonized Messaging

Workflow systems in specific and Business Process Management Technologies in general, have significantly contributed to overcoming some of the integration problems of intra and inter enterprise process control and monitoring. However, the complexity of the interactions between heterogeneous and autonomous systems within the enterprise and often between trading partners in ever increasing. A number of initiatives and proposals are underway to provide solutions for process specification and communication. However, the focus is often on defining APIs and interfaces rather than the semantics of the underlying interactions. On the other hand messaging technologies are well positioned as the key enabling technology for facilitating these interactions. Although messaging systems have traditionally had a different agenda dominated by scalability and performance, we see a great potential in the enhancement of current messaging infrastructure, in its new role in facilitating complex, long running interactions for dynamic and collaborative processes operating in decentralized environments like the web. In this paper, we primarily present a vision for a technology aimed at providing a level of harmonization to multiple messages to form a single custom definable backbone. We will provide the foundation framework for the harmonized messaging technology and identify fundamental issues for the management of such complex interactions.