I went to the Chicago SharePoint Users Group meeting this evening. Ted Perotte from Quilogy was there, providing a solid oveview of the three of workflow (MOSS out of the box, SharePoint Designer, and Visual Studio), from least complex to most complex. I like to say there is a fourth level of workflow, simpler than all of them, for situations like submitting very simple requests to a list. In this case, you don't use any formal workflow, but just allow users to add items to a list, and provide a workflow-like / workflow-lite effect through views, a status column, and alerts.
Good news about this user group: it's getting more active. In recent months, you might have thought the group was dormant because there were events only every other month and the website was not that up to date. Fear not! CSUG is becoming a Culminis User Group, and will be moving to a better website. They also are planning more events through the end of the year!
The second speaker was from K2 and demonstrated their workflow / business process automation solution, which looked pretty impressive. They have build a great deal of functionality on top of Windows Workflow and SharePoint and InfoPath, but there was no information on pricing, which makes me suspicious of the cost. However, one of the things that you can build with apparent ease is a site provisioning solution, which I have seen as a very common need. A few projects ago, I built one for a client of mine, using SharePoint Application Pages and Windows Workflow in Visual Studio 2005.
That's all for tonight.
--Michael