The Business Process Management (BPM) is based on the premise that applications (of business processes) can be evolving independently from process management, very much like they have been evolving independently from data management. While the database technology underpins data independence, the technology of web services and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) are at the forefront of enabling a desired degree of process independence. The related technology stack includes document management and workflow solutions as well as enterprise integration and e-business interoperability solutions. Ultimately, a new category of system software, Business Process Management Systems (BPMS), may provide a process- side counterpart to database technology. Services within SOA are units of processing logic that collaborate to deliver enterprise logic as a combined effect of business process logic and application control logic. In other words, services apply to both kinds of logic and create a connectivity layer that enables independence of processes and applications. Services can ensure that processes and applications evolve gracefully together (very much like the aspect code and the base code in aspect-oriented programming) and the “crosscutting concerns” are well-documented and tractable. The SOA paradigm redefines the concept of an application as a distributed set of implementation- independent services executing as an orchestrated sequence of messaging and event processing. The confluence of SOA and BPM is resulting in a new process-centric paradigm that holds great promise for enterprise and B2B computing. Moreover, one of the major tasks BPM has to deal with is the constant need to adapt implemented processes to the changing business needs. As the degree of automation in BPM is currently rather limited, a great potential lies in the attempts to automate BPM a little further by the use of Semantic Web services and technologies. Founded on ontologies, Semantic Web provides methods and tools for the machine- understandable representation of collective knowledge and business processes in which such knowledge resides. Semantic Web Services (SWS) make use of Semantic Web technology to support the automated discovery, substitution, composition, and execution of SOA-based applications. Current research shows that combining the worlds of BPM and SWS may be very fruitful.

Summarizing, the main motivation for the BPSC conferences is to report research and industry solutions for modern business process automation that is (most likely) based on services computing. The BPSC conferences look at process management as a new paradigm with semantics and meta-models radically different from applications that merely implement business processes. The novelty aspects include such issues as:

* embracing all processes in business organizations,
* separating business process logic from application control logic,
* meta-level management of business process lifecycle,
* direct visibility of business processes to facilitate their comprehension,
* predictable evolution of business processes with clearly known implications on existing applications,
* reduction in software and system complexity based on process independence and architectural frameworks for business process management initiatives,
* combining Semantic Web technology and BPM.