If you're going to Hannover Fair... Well it's not the mammoth Hannover Fair itself anymore but the spin-off called CeBIT (Centrum der Büro- und Informationstechnik; German for "Centre of Office and Information technology (IT)") begins March 3. I have never actually been myself but was involved in discussions in the 1970s when I was a marketing manager about who we could bribe and how in order to get better exhibit space at Hannover Fair. Apparently that was a universal issue in IT marketing because in 1986 the office and IT portion of the fair was split off into a separate event.
Anyways, if you are going to CeBIT, look up IDS Scheer (which probably has primo space, nein?). I spoke to Allen Johnson, Director of Strategic Initiatives for the Americas at IDS Scheer on February 24 and he tells me Scheer will be demonstrating a process governance engine, a development effort that has some interesting business process management (BPM) implications. Scheer's interest in governance comes from the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) perspective, which is part of that whole different world that applies BPM concepts specifically to IT. (Of course, those guys in the ITIL/information-technology lifecycle management world might say that we BPM guys apply their concepts to business processes.)
Coincidentally I was talking with Harald Nehring of Scheer-partner SAP this week (at least I think it was coincidental; I don't think the German companies were ganging up on me). He mentioned continuing discussions within SAP about the potential for intelligent process automation (IPA). One of the key ingredients of IPA--whether it is from SAP or one of many other Scheer partners--is the business process modeling capability enabled by Scheer. But what happens if Scheer makes the not-out-of-the-question step of turning a governance engine into a business-process engine?
Anyways, food for thought as you enjoy early spring or late winter at Hannover. (Hannover Fair itself is in April and always was considered a sign of spring as European IT marketing guys in the 70s and 80s prepared for it.)
-- Dennis Byron
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