Workflow Management in the Internet Age

Abstract

In the last few years, workflow management has become a hot topic in the research community and in the commercial arena. Workflow systems hold the promise of facilitating the efficient everyday operation of many enterprises and work environments. Workflow management is multidisciplinary in nature encompasses many aspects of computing: database management, distributed systems, messaging, transaction management, mobile computing, collaboration, business process modelling, integration of legacy and new applications, document management, etc.

Many academic and industrial research projects have been underway for a while. Numerous products are currently in use. The capabilities of these products are being enhanced in significant ways. Standardization efforts are in progress under the auspices of the Workflow Management Coalition and OMG.

As has happened in the RDBMS area with respect to some topics, in the workflow area also some of the important real-life problems faced by customers and product developers are not being tackled by researchers. Based on my experience founding and leading the Exotica workflow project at IBM Research, and my close collaboration with the IBM FlowMark (now called MQSeries Workflow) and Lotus Notes product groups, in this talk I will discuss the issues relating to contemporary workflow management systems. I will also elaborate on various directions for research and potential future extensions to the design and modelling of workflow management systems.