Signavio-Oryx Academic Initiative

Since 2007 we have seen increasing interest in using the Oryx process modeling framework1 by academics. Many universities already use the platform in teaching to model, analyze, and simulate processes. While many courses focus on BPMN, also Petri nets and EPCs are used, all of which are supported by the system. The Signavio-Oryx Academic Initiative (SOAI) is a joint project of academic and industrial partners that aims at providing a mature process modeling platform and teaching material for researchers and lecturers, free of charge2. The SOAI builds on the technical foundation of the Web-based process modeling tool Oryx, an open and extensible platform for business process management [1]. Following recent trends in application design and delivery, SOAI offers comprehensive features for process modeling and management in the fashion of Software as a Service, superseding those of Oryx. Both, application logic and model data, reside on the Web: The modeling environment runs in a standard Web browser; each model is identified via a URL and can be obtained in different representations, e.g. pdf, xml, svg, and png. Thus, models can be shared by reference, i.e., bookmarks. This contributes to collaboration, since several modelers work on the same resource, rather than on copies. For each model a complete version history is available. Signavio is a startup company from members of the Business Process Technology group at Hasso Plattner Institute. The Signavio Process Editor is a commercial process modeling and analysis tool that is based on Oryx. The company hosts, supports, and maintains the technical platform of the SOAI. The initiative further comprises a team of academic partners: the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken (USA), the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven (Netherlands), the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane (Australia), the Universitat Stuttgart, the Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, and the Hasso Plattner Institute, Universitat Potsdam (Germany). Together, we strive to promote the platform and contribute to a high quality body of teaching material and tools in the BPM field.