The chair of BPMI.org and VP of technology for Sterling Commerce, Jeanne Baker, said that the two not-for-profit standards groups had discovered a lot of commonality and some overlap at BPMI.org’s recent Think Tank event in Miami, Florida.

However Baker said that it is not yet assured that the two will actually merge: We believe that we could fairly rapidly get to the stage where we have the volunteers lined up to do the technical work together, and the leadership buy-in of both organizations. But I honestly couldn’t tell you that the leadership is all completely bought into the idea just yet.

The WfMC confirmed the merger talks. WfMC chair and CEO of on-demand business process management company The Process Factory, Jon Pyke, said: There is a huge reservoir of process knowledge within the WfMC community such as XPDL and Wf-XML that can be leveraged within a merged organization. BPMI has demonstrated their commitment to process innovation and royalty free standards and we fully support these goals.

BPMI.org has been working on standards in the area of business process management (BPM), including Business Process Modeling Language (BPML) for modeling business processes, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) to visually describe those models, and Business Process Query Language (BPQL) for querying business processes. The WfMC, meanwhile, has been working on XML Process Definition Language (XPDL), a framework for implementing business process management and workflow engines, and other related process standards.

As Baker pointed out, there is some overlap among these standards and those from other standards groups such as the Object Management Group (OMG), for instance between the OMG’s Business Process Definition Metamodel (BPDM) and WfMC’s XPDL: XPDL is an established standard, but the OMG is sending out a request for proposals on BPDM, and people will not want to deploy both, so that is a question we need to address. My perspective is that the people who created XPDL are valuable and vital to the birthing of BPDM.

Baker said that it is possible that the OMG’s BPDM would win out as the standard of choice for process definition, but said that BPMI.org and the WfMC – whether they merge or not – will work to provide an upgrade path for XPDL users, and ensure that the best parts of XPDL find their way into BPDM. She said a merger would address the demand for standards convergence while using the intellectual property and strengths of both organizations.

We have work to do to unify a process stack from the highest level modeling to the lowest level of execution, said Baker. WfMC shares our passion. We both believe in process, BPMN, and the work ahead. WfMC members offer strong worldwide support that produces new work and maintains existing standards in a timely fashion.

BPMI.org was initiated by Intalio, founded in August 2000 and has around 50 members. The WfMC, meanwhile, was founded in 1993 and has over 300 members.