Aligning the needs of the business with those of IT via technology such as composite applications and Business Process Management (BPM) can help enable the enterprise agility critical to creating sustained competitive advantage.



That message rang out loud and clear in the ebizQ webinar Best Practices for Managing Complexity, part of the Accelerating Business Change Series sponsored by Magic Software .

ebizQ Vice-President for Strategic Services Beth Gold-Bernstein and Magic’s iBOLT Project Leader Avigdor Luttinger outlined a comprehensive infrastructure that links existing applications and manages technical and business processes.

“The key buzzword today in business is agility,” said Gold-Bernstein, who detailed the benefits of -- and barriers to -- extending and leveraging existing technology. Complex combinations of legacy, packaged, and custom applications, as well as a myriad of operating systems, platforms, and databases at many companies have created “little fiefdoms of information” that “were never meant to integrate or interoperate.”

“No one can afford to rip-and-replace what's already there and start anew,” Gold-Bernstein observed. Because many companies spent a lot of money on Y2K remediation projects, those mainframe systems are here to stay. “However, they were never meant to meet the needs of the new types of business applications: Web applications, and integrating with partners, suppliers and customers,” she added.

Composite applications give enterprises "the ability to assemble new applications from existing components to take whatever already exists in the organization, add some new functionality, change the flow of control, add some process rules, and then rapidly deploy a new business solution," she pointed out.

Gold-Bernstein detailed key parts of what Gartner calls “the enterprise nervous system”: extensive connectivity, intelligent routing of information (especially for error- and cost-reducing automated processes), reusable and standard application interfaces not dependent on hand-coding, B2B integration support, and process visibility and performance metrics that are key factors of Business Process Management.

“As the flow of information across an organization does not belong to any one application, the logic is within the process itself,” she noted. “In the distributed composite application the process is the application. The process has the rules of how the application works as it crosses all these different components.”

-1-

1  2  

   Next Page

Explore Our Topics

  • EDITOR'S BRIEFING

ebizQ editorial highlights and updates, compiled by Site Editor Anne Stuart

  • BPM: Big for 2012: BPM is a top priority for companies everywhere this year, according to TechTarget's global survey. Anne Stuart reports.
  • Cloud coverage: Cloud computing offers significant benefits--and challenges--for BPM. Crystal Bedell explains in ebizQ's latest BPM Quarterly e-zine.
  • Simple advantage: When properly integrated, complex event processing can provide plenty of business value. For more, see this feature by SearchSOA Editor in Chief Jack Vaughan.
  • ebizQ editorial: Browse our collection of independent editorial content, including articles, tips, Q & As, podcasts, guest columns, book excerpts and more.
  • Virtual Conferences
  • Webinars
  • Roundtables

BPM in Action

March 10, 2011

The sixth annual BPM in Action 2011 Virtual Conference will explore cutting-edge market developments in BPM and describe how to leverage them for improved business operation and performance. More

View All Virtual Conferences

Best Practices in Moving Processes to the Clouds

Date:Apr 07, 2010
Time:13:00 PM ET- (17:00 GMT)

REGISTER TODAY!

How Can the Cloud Fit Into Your Applications Strategy?

Date:Apr 07, 2010
Time:12:00 PM ET- (16:00 GMT)

REGISTER TODAY!
View All Roundtables
  • Research Library
  • Podcasts
  • News

Joe McKendrick: Part II of II: Designing Evolve-ability into SOA and IT Systems

In part two of Joe McKendrick's recent podcast with Miko Matsumura, chief strategist for Software AG, they talk about how SOA and IT systems need to change and grow and adapt with the organization around it.

Listen Now

Phil Wainewright: Helping Brands Engage with Social Media

Phil Wainewright interviews David Vap, VP of products at RightNow Technologies, and finds out how sharing best practices can help businesses understand how best to engage with online communities.

Listen Now

Peter Schooff: Making Every IT Dollar Result in a Desired Business Outcome: Scott Hebner of IBM Rati

Scott Hebner, Vice President of Marketing and Strategy for IBM Rational, discusses a topic on the top of every company's mind today: getting the most from IT investments.

Listen Now

Jessica Ann Mola: Where Will BI Fit In? Lyndsay Wise Explains

In BI, this tough economy and the increasing role of Web 2.0 and MDM are certainly topics on people's minds today. WiseAnalytics' Lyndsay Wise addresses each of them in this informative podcast.

Listen Now

Dennis Byron: Talking with...Deepak Singh of BPM Provider Adeptia

Deepak Singh, President and CTO of Adeptia, joins ebizQ's Dennis Byron in a podcast that gets its hand around the trend of industry-specific BPM.

Listen Now
More Podcasts
  • Most Popular
  • Quick Guide
  • Most Discussed

Quick Guide: What is BPM?

Learn More

Quick Guide: What is Event Processing?

Smart event processing can help your company run smarter and faster. This comprehensive guide helps you research the basics of complex event processing (CEP) and learn how to get started on the right foot with your CEP project using EDA, RFID, SOA, SCADA and other relevant technologies. Learn More

Quick Guide: What is Enterprise 2.0?

A lot of people are talking about Enterprise 2.0 as being the business application of Web 2.0 technology. However, there's still some debate on exactly what this technology entails, how it applies to today's business models, and which components bring true value. Some use the term Enterprise 2.0 exclusively to describe the use of social networking technologies in the enterprise, while others use it to describe a web economy platform, or the technological framework behind such a platform. Still others say that Enterprise 2.0 is all of these things. Learn More


E-Zine: BPM Quarterly

This new publication from our sister site SearchSOA.com explores workflow, business activity monitoring (BAM) and complex event processing (CEP) issues.

Featured Bloggers

Scott Cleveland's Latest Blog Posts:

Read Scott Cleveland's Blog
Peter Schooff's Latest Blog Posts:

Read Peter Schooff's Blog
Michael Poulin's Latest Blog Posts:

Read Michael Poulin's Blog
Tim Huenemann 's Latest Blog Posts:

Read Tim Huenemann 's Blog
Adrian Grigoriu's Latest Blog Posts:

Read Adrian Grigoriu's Blog
Steven Minsky's Latest Blog Posts:

Read Steven Minsky's Blog
Andre Yee's Latest Blog Posts:

Read Andre Yee's Blog

View All ebizQ Bloggers