Both the business rule and software development industry are entering an exciting new era of business agility, accelerated deployment and enterprise-wide optimization. Business rule vendors are now reporting business application development cost reductions of 50 percent and greater (several projects are reporting 90 percent). There is a growing appreciation of the value of business rules as independent statements of reusable business logic across the enterprise. Business rules are key enablers of the service-oriented architecture (SOA) and a critical component for enterprise SOA (ESOA). The business rules approach is creating a sea of change in how corporations will build and maintain their core business systems. This change arises from the performance, cost and ease-of-use of the best business rule management systems.

The perennial promise of a "silver bullet" to kill the "werewolf" of business complexity has mutated through many epoch-changing technologies. We have all heard of the great breakthroughs that were supposed to occur as a result of so many different tools and techniques. Yet, the majority of projects are still failing. This leads to poor business performance because we are not developing business software as quickly as needed in this global market frenzy.

Originally in 1984, Fred Brooks divided business complexity into essential - the business part - and accidental - the technical part. Basically, essential business complexities are the required business details, their conditions and multiple inter-relationships. These are simply the inherent nature of the business "beast." The accidental or technical complexity, such as tools and techniques, can be fundamentally changed. In technology, we have lived through many dynamic upgrades and even "paradigms" including: structured programming; first to fifth generation languages (5GLs); computer-aided software engineering (CASE); development environments; client-server; objects; components; and now services in an SOA.

So, what actually is new about business rule management systems (BRMS)? Why do they actually come closest to fulfilling this elusive goal of being an authentic "silver bullet"?