This IDC Insight looks at the implications of July?October 2004 Business Process Execution Language (BPEL)?standard announcements by Active Endpoints, BEA, Choreology, Dralasoft, FiveSight, IBM, the JBoss Organization, Metastorm, Microsoft, Oracle, ReadiMinds, Sterling Commerce, Sun, Sybase, TIBCO, WebMethods, the W3C, and the United States' Department of Defense (DOD). The drumbeat of product availability and almost universal supplier encouragement to "spec in" the new standard picked up over the July-October 2004 time period but the U.S. DOD suggests a "wait-and-see" to its IT staff as it also suggests alternatives to BPEL.