Difference between BPM and BPEL

BPEL and BPM are two distinct products with similar objectives using different tools, standards, and techniques. Oracle BPEL came from an acquisition of Collaxa in 2004 and BPM was a product acquired during the acquisition of BEA Systems in 2008. Oracle BPM (AquaLogic BPM) is a pure-play Business Process Management Suite meaning it has all the BPM tools in one product which includes process modeling, simulation, integration, execution, and analysis among other components. From a broad perspective, OBPM is centered around managing an organization's business processes where business users and IT users can collaborate using the same tools and artifacts. BPEL is focused more on a subset of this and caters more to integrating system to system type activities using XML/webservices to pass messages between activities. OBPM is really good at human interaction from a design/development perspective as well as from a usage perspective compared to BPEL. The two can also co-exist in a solution that involves processes that are both human-centric and integration (system-system) centric. OBPM would drive the process and invoke BPEL as a service to fulfill an activity or set of activities that requires a series of system to system calls. Highlights: Oracle BPM: - Pure-play BPM Suite - A superset of functionality to BPEL - Caters to both Business and IT users - Good at human centric processes - Based on XPDL and BPMN standards - Easy to learn, develop, maintain, and use - Can call a BPEL process to perform a service Oracle BPEL: - Subset of BPM Suite functionality - Caters to IT users - Used mostly for system-system integration - BPEL standards based - Requires more sophisticated technical skills to install, learn and use (not for business users at all) - Can be invoked as a service from BPM or other application