What Is BPM if you know Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)?

An SOA uses Internet web services protocols - XML, SOAP, UDDI, and WSDL - to provide a platform for the integration and reuse of existing systems into a unified enterprise architecture. Before the Internet and XML it was difficult and expensive to link software components together.

SOA encapsulates existing applications written in a variety languages and exposes them as services based on a standard interface. BPM systems use graphical tools to assemble these services together with human interactions into an end-to-end process. The BPM system then deploys the process as a web application, providing management and contol over its execution.

Savvion consumes existing web services into processes, integrates existing applications into processes, and publishes composite processes as web services. Savvion includes an enterprise UDDI directory which enables organisations to automate processes while incrementally building the foundation for an SOA.