SOAP-based Web Services are quickly becoming the standard solution to publish business services, both within corporate firewalls as well as externally to provide integration points with business partners.

Two complementary developments in the world of software applications are the Service Oriented Enterprise model and Software-as-a-Service. With the continuing popularity of Web Services and the growing adoption of these two service-based application models, building IT and commercial applications will more and more consist of the integration – and orchestration – of Web Services.

The strongest orchestration technology candidate is the Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). It was jointly created by IBM, BEA and Microsoft in August 2002. Within a year, BPEL 1.1 was submitted to OASIS to obtain open standardization. With all major players in the industry now participating in the BPEL open standards process, BPEL will be the undisputed standard for the orchestration of XML Web Services.

A BPEL process is an XML document typically generatesd with graphical design tools by business analysts rather than programmers. BPEL processes are executed by an execution engine. The engine can publish a BPEL process through a Web Services interface or react to trigger conditions set up inside the process itself.

XML Web Services and service-based architectures are quickly becoming the standard development model for software applications. A standard orchestration language like BPEL will be one of the enabling technologies for these architectures, while reducing the time and cost required for implementation.