As we are discussing BPMN in detail and looking at how it fits into the overall SOA vision of an organization, it is fair to say that the mere modeling of a business process as a graphical object is not of much value to an organization. Any organization looking to map processes as part of an overall SOA implementation, should look into the tools that provide at least the following basic capabilities:
Standards-based process modeling
Process Simulation for As-Is and To-Be analysis
A Process Repository for centralization of all process modeling activities
Process Model Execution—support for creating execution models from process diagrams
Process Communication—an approach for allowing multiple stakeholders to view the most recent and complete process data
Most of the tools we see around the market for business process modeling and analysis come from a history of either being case tools for systems modeling, such as UML, or model repository tools...