I haven't written any thing for a while. Part of the reason is because I'm now back to school - Stevens Institute of Technology.
As my career advancing, I'm more and more focusing on Enterprise Architecture and Business Process Management. Of course, as an EA, you'll never hand off on technologies. So as a Microsoft guy, I'm always curious about what Microsoft will offer to BPM.
I'm a little suprised when I talk to my professor Dr. Michael zur Muehlen (his blog: bpm-research.com). He sees Microsoft as just a vender of System Integration Solution. And it seems Gartner is agreeing with him. Check out this gartner BPM Magic Quadrant 2007(free with registered user). I also find that Sandy Kemsley had a chance to closely examine Microsoft's tech stack, and shared with on her blog column2.com.
But I still remain curious on what are the commonly agreed criteria of a qualified BPM solution. I agree that BizTalk is not a complete business architecting to automatic execution solution, but can we at least say it's a workflow system than a simply EAI/ESB? I mean, it got BPEL engine, rule engine, BAM....
Is that because the lack of 'human-centric' features that BizTalk is not recognized as a BPM player? I'll find out, later.