The development and operation of modern IT infrastructures requires generally accepted standards. Many standardization efforts are currently ongoing within the service oriented and event processing community. Recently a new discipline entitled "EventDriven Business Process Management (ED-BPM)" has emerged which takes a synergetic approach within this larger area. Consecutively, topics being discussed in this paper relate to the role of standards in the ED-BPM context, the need for a standard per se and the benefits and shortcomings of standardization in early phases vs. late phases. Within this activities, the most interesting proposal for a reference architecture is the Networked European Software and Services Initiative (NESSI) approach called NESSI Open Serivce Framework -Reference Architecture (NEXOF-RA) which has to be enhanced in order to support ED-BPM applications. Thereupon a proposal for describing the context and structure of occurring events on a descriptive and non-complex level of events is discussed. Related industry standards like "Notification Event Architecture for Retail (NEAR)" and the possibility to extend that approach to other domains are surveyed. Two possible extensions are exemplified, for the logistics domain (NEAL), and for the finance domain (NEAF). Use cases for the retail, logistics, and finance domains are demonstrated. In the final analysis conclusions are drawn and proposed action items for advancing the ED-BPM standardization are made.The following paper is a shortened version. The whole paper can be downloaded on the CITT-homepage

Business processes must become agile, respond to changes in the business environment in a timely manner and quickly adapt themselves to new conditions. Event-Driven Business Process Management (ED-BPM) is an enhancement of Business Process Management (BPM) by concepts of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Complex Event Processing (CEP). The most important enhancement is the integration of services accessible via the Internet that fire events into global event clouds. The events can be processed by event processing platforms for aggregating the information into higher value complex business events. These events can be modeled in a business process execution language within a process driven Business Process Management System (BPMS) to trigger changes in control flow of a process or start other services. A reference model and a reference architecture for ED-BPM are presented, based on the NEXOF Reference Architecture. A taxonomy for classifying changes to process flow is proposed. Enhancements have to be applied to the existing standards in the BPM field, including both the design-time and the runtime. A scenario from the banking domain illustrates the main concepts and principles.