"If you talk to many BPM practitioners, you will find that most assume that BPEL is, or will soon function as, the language of choice for BPM work. BPEL4WS was originally announced in August of 2003 by BEA, IBM, and Microsoft. Their announcement came just as the BPMI.org was about to release the first version of their own alternative BPM language specification, BPML, and the announcement effectively sidelined BPML. Soon after the initial announcement, the originators were joined by many others, including many of the folks that had been working on BPML, and the draft specification of BPEL4WS (now almost universally
know as BPEL) was submitted to OASIS for completion."
TMT Market Research Summaries and Analysis