The Insider's Guide to Business and IT Agility
By Hemen Godbole, Fiorano and Sriram Chakravarthy, Fiorano , 08/26/2002
Print this article
Email this article
Talk Back!
Write to Editor
Business survival depends on an ability to react rapidly to new business demands. Since applications and data are the lifeblood of any business, the business managers in an enterprise need to be able to rapidly compose and deploy business processes, which are themselves composed of an arbitrary number of individual applications. At the same time, in order to provide the business users with effective, easy-to-use solutions, the implementers--including architects, programmers and management software engineers--need to know the fine-grained, message-level details for transactions between components in a business process.
Fortunately, a component-based distributed integration management package can
address the needs of all groups of users, whether business managers or IT implementers.
The following sections present the four main types of professionals who typically
must work with an integration solution and describe how their needs can best
be met with a component-based approach.
Business Managers
Business managers need an arsenal of prebuilt and tested components that can be interconnected and deployed as easily as using macros in spreadsheets for numerical analysis. Once these are composed, managers will need to experiment with various business process flows and scenario analyses, which requires a rapid recomposition of the process by resequencing or adding new components.
Further, as new standards such as Web services emerge, managers will want to
be able to, for example, swap an older C/C++ application that performs loan
calculations with a Web service that performs the same function. Therefore,
an effective integration management package will offer a visual orchestration
tool that can compose, alter and implement real-time changes.
Solution Architects
Most business integration projects involve four steps: prototype creation, production deployment, ongoing management and extension of the process to other enterprise systems. While business users are the primary force specifying a prototype creation, the main focus of a business process architect is to ensure the correct intercomponent routing of data and the solving of any design challenges of the implemented process, as specified by the business managers driving the specifications.
Architects also need to ensure near-linear scalability, with no loss of performance as additional services are added to a business process and/or new users and machines begin to join the networked enterprise. Therefore, architects must first select an appropriate architecture to ensure that their integration solutions can correctly route data and scale to meet the future needs of the business.
1
ROUNDTABLE: Stretch Your Budget with smart SOA Governance-A Look at Successful Case Studies
ROUNDTABLE: Open Source Market Update
Insurance: Explore how SOA & BPM are driving down expenses and improving ROI
ebizQ is very interested in what you have to say. To contribute an article, an opinion, or to become a blogger, please contact Peter Schooff.
You need Adobe Flash Player 9 to view this widget.
June 3, 2009
One of the most compelling trends in the enterprise business technology space over the past year has been the emergence of cloud computing. In ebizQ’s upcoming Qcamp virtual un-conference, leading industry experts and practitioners will explore the role of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM) in supporting cloud-computing initiatives. Additionally, the new skills that developers and IT managers need for successful cloud development will be discussed.Register
Date: Aug 26, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM
ET- (16:00 GMT)
Date: Sep 30, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM
ET- (16:00 GMT)
Date:Aug 26, 2009
Time:12:00 PM
ET- (16:00 GMT)
Date:Sep 30, 2009
Time:12:00 PM
ET- (16:00 GMT)
A True ESB stands in stark contrast to the proprietary integration technologies of the past. As the ESB rapidly gains traction in the marketplace,...
Download Now
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 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
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
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
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
From Dennis Byron: For BPM to fit at the top of the stack, it can't merely support workflow or integration. It needs to integrate the BI aspects of the stack, too. Learn More
In the insurance industry, companies have accepted that systems, strategies and data all developed in silos are making it difficult for them to grow and adjust to today’s market demands. The obstacles imposed by siloed approaches are painfully obvious to companies as they try to gain a better understanding of their customers and meet the growing constraints imposed by compliance and regulatory requirements. Leveraging industry standards with full data integration is one was to tackle this challenge. Learn More
From Dennis Byron: Is it better to choose one strain of BPM over another? The answer is unique to your organization. Learn More
Can decision management really deliver costs savings, agility and happy customers on a consistent basis? Learn More
From Dennis Byron: BPM products optimized for case management might be the products that bridge the extremes in my view of the BPM spectrum. Learn More
Integrating BPM and CEP gives you intelligent business processes that can react to rapidly changing business conditions with continuous visibility. Learn More
Insurers need to think about creating "true linkage," which means linking business strategy to process to IT investments and thereby setting the foundation for true change. Learn More
To be effective, business intelligence technology must work behind the scenes to deliver relevant information when, where, and how it's needed. Learn More
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
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
To Michael: To select what has to be improved (e.g. automated), a...
Hi Johan,
thank you for such prompt response.
I...
Phil,
It appears that Google is looking at the world...
I believe work has been done in this area privately for some time....
I wonder if BPM has become more popular because many solutions...
We are looking for a FileNET admin/developer in Houston, TX. The...
As we see more companies consider the cloud we should be...
Scott,
I agree that process management is good way for...
|
|
|
|
