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I was talking to some folks at Sun about Sun Preventative Services' use of Ipedo's EII product alongside the Blaze Advisor business rules management system in their Risk Analysis System (SRAS). This struck me as an interesting use of two technologies - EII and business rules.

The solution is focused on preventive maintenance of all computer hardware and software as a way of minimizing IT costs.  It continuously measures Sun customers’ IT assets, takes preemptive actions when required and provides recommendations for optimizing operations.  This kind of real-time "self-service" means customers need to call for support less often (helping both Sun and their customers reduce cost), have less down-time and have better performance.

Doing this took real-time data integration to combine system configuration data, information on software releases and patches, information on customer support contracts and SLAs, information on current support activities, as well as customer contact and account information. This is where the EII software comes in. It also took the automation of complex decision-making using this information and the engagement of folks who understood the technical problems in the process of documenting the rules. This is where the Business Rules Management System comes in.

Data first. The data used by the system is geographically distributed, with some information coming from Sun’s internal systems and some coming directly from customer systems.  Additionally, it is in multiple formats.  System and patch information is in XML and information on customer contracts and contact details coming from several relational databases.  Ipedo's EII solution pulls data from disparate sources, including rules analysis, and aggregates it.  This includes joining data across XML/Web Services and multiple existing relational databases. A classic EII problem.

Next rules. Aggregating and getting access to the data is just the beginning. You need to take advantage of the information if you are going to maximize ita value. Now you can do this with reporting and dashboards and so on. But if you can use the data to make decisions and recommend/take actions then you can dramatically increase its value. A business rules management system lets you build rules against the objects aggregated by the EII product. In the case of Sun they also built templates to ensure consistent structure of these rules and to allow them to empower non-programmers to collaborate in the definition of the rules. The folks who understand the hardware are technical but that does not mean they want to write code, after all. By taking the expertise and know-how of these folks and turning it into rules, and by running those rules against real-time data from multiple sources, they are able to make the best possible recommendations for their customers.

Now in this kind of system, business agility is key. This means not only being able to change the rules quickly as new experience is gained or new products/patches released, but also means allowing Sun’s customers to change their systems without breaking everything. The EII piece of the puzzle is key in making sure that changes to the data structures are managed separately so that they don't break the decisioning piece. Meanwhile the rules management piece means that rules can be added and changed without breaking anything else. This ensures maximum agility.

EII and business rules management can each add value but they can be compelling as a pair.

Posted by jtaylor in Decision Technologies |Digg This|Add to del.icio.us

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