When enterprise architects discuss the future of the software landscape of their organization, they map the functional capabilities, such as customer relationship management and order management, to existing or new applications—some packaged and some custom. Then, they connect these applications by means of middleware. They typically use the notion of an integration middleware, such as an enterprise service bus (ESB), to depict the technical integration between these applications, exposing functionality as services, APIs, or, more trendy, "micro services".

These services are used by modern, more and more mobile frontends and B2B partners. For several years now, it has been hard to find a PowerPoint slide that discusses future enterprise middleware without the notion of a BPM layer that sits on top of the frontend and the SOA service layer. So, in most organizations, we find a slide deck that contains this visual box named BPM, signifying the aim to improve...