We have a question regarding upgrading existing BPM/WPS applications.  With upcoming support changes, our company is looking to retire our usage of Websphere Process Server (WPS) 6.2 and Websphere Business Monitor (WBM) 6.2.  We’re very interested in knowing what other companies have done/are planning to do to move process instances from the 6.2 application to the 8.5 application.

We have two applications each consisting of several BPEL process modules.  One of the applications allows for active process instances to remain for up to six months.  Six months is a long time to leave both systems deployed.  Ideally, we’d like to move active instances over to the new system when the new system is deployed.  We’ve heard there are challenges with this approach.

Please respond if you or your company has experience performing this type of an effort.  We’d be very interested in learning about your experience, challenges faced, and the amount of time and planning required to upgrade.  We’d also be interested in learning of any improvements in this process with prior versions of BPM.