In reading the article and the comments, I see potential sources of confusion.
1. There are different kinds of services in a SOA context.
2. Where do you put the work-flow?
3. A stable business process model identifies “what is produced” while avoiding the details about “how it is produced”. The “what” is very stable over time while the “how” changes as we improve and automate processes.

Different kinds of services:
. Business Service – is the automated proxy (order entry) to a real-life process.
. Technical Service – example: Authentication, Authorization, used in many contexts.
. Data Service – access to data reflecting the corporate short-term and long-term memory.

Where do you put the work-flow?
- We tend to put it into the message flow (e.g. BPEL or in the queues). But this is not a very good representation (model) of the Business Process. We need something better.

- The “what” of a business process is the content of a Business Service API.
- The “how” may have two parts: internal and external work-flows.
- The external work-flow should be modeled in an appropriate tool. The work-flow and the SOA are related in that the SOA supports the work-flow.
- When the service has its own internal work-flow, the “how” should be in an internal work-flow tool and hidden from the client. The client should not need or want to micro-manage the process. They have delegated the task.

Finally, the confusion between SOA and BPM is often due to the sales approach. The sales team gets management attention by first talking about BPM. Then they imply that the BPM is mapped to the SOA. People who have not actually built these kinds of business automations have a naive view about the real nature of the mapping.

I believe your statement of:
A process that needs to cross continents or rely on participation of a department that is resistant to change pose a far greater problem to process optimization than not having a web service available to invoke.
Is correct! It is related to process optimization and not process standardization. Having a service available to allow multiple-departments to enhance and optimize their business and operational processes will help ensure departmental heads get on-board. But, this is where some SOA experts claim to have the answers that align with the value of SOA. I believe you hit the nail on the head but stating the two; BPM & SOA are separate. Early statements I made on the IBM and Texas Instruments conference calls back in January of ‘07 stated that SOA is a compliment to the business strategy with modular best practice made into standards to fit into demanding business needs. However; I have seen SOA fail in organizations where BPM was done correctly and adopted by its leaders but SOA lacked governance from the top-down.

A question I have; is how has your organization overcome this major obstacle to successfully implement SOA?

Great discussion!
Thank you.

Process optimization can come through many channels, automation being one of them. Changes in communication techniques, organization hierarchy and simple process task ordering can all lead to significant upsides without even engaging IT. SOA proponents need to realize once and for all that technology is least limiting factor to organizational change; in essence, it’s the easy stuff. Like anything technology is a means to an end, not the end itself; it’s no different for SOA. The end result of BPM is process improvement, regardless of how it is achieved.

With regard to your 2nd point about SOA people seeing BPM as their number one customer, I don’t necessarily agree with that point either. The business is SOA’s #1 customer. Some SOA efforts may support a BPM initiative, but it also might just support business partner integration or portfolio rationalization, which results in lower TCO. While the two can share some common goals, venn diagram wise, each stands alone with a small percentage of overlap.

Maybe you could put massive organisational change management around it to embed the new processes. But you’re pushing water up hill if those processes aren’t automated to offer a course of least resistance to all stakeholders in the business.

So if SOA isn’t the automation framework required for automating BPM, what are the alternatives? (silence deafens)

As to the touch points between those programs: if the SOA people don’t see the BPM people as the number one customer for the SOA what are they building it for?