In the interview Arnaud talks about how “Open Source permitted it to Intalio to place the conventional sales model on the head” (you have to love automatic translation engines). The ability for Open Source to provide a pay-as-you-go approach to building your BPM project, what we refer to as COSMO (commercial open source model) has proved to be a successful approach for us. Arnaud and BT also discussed the state of the industry today in regards to co-opetition in the Open Source world.

Our CEO Ismael Ghalimi, will be in town so we want to extend the invitation to our friends and colleagues in the area to come join us for drinks and chat about Business Process Management. A number of visionaries in the industry mentioned they would drop by, so I think it will provide some interesting conversation. A great opportunity to talk to others who are going through the same BPM adoption path you are, or have innovated and are willing to share their recipe for success.

 If you are interested, let me know either by email jos@intalio.com or by phone (203) 791-0182.

Looking foward to seeing you there.

Bino Jos
Process Expert, Intalio.

                                                             Renaissance Time Square Hotel

                                                             Two Times Square, 714 Seventh Avenue

                                                              New York, NY 10036

Ismael and Michael took the long view, going back into history of BPM but also peering into the crystal ball to see what the future holds. Ismael discusses how Software-as-a-Service acts as both a disruptive technology and an enabling ecosystem. The two also got into the role of process orchestration in digital supply chains. Definitely a wide ranging article.

Please feel free to follow Intalio.

He made the slides available on Slideshare. Don’t hesitate to give some feedback!

Process Engine

Intalio uses Apache Ode as the BPEL engine. This is the leading BPEL engine. It uses only open standards, uses a fully transactional engine, and is embeddable. Processes are tied to memory. There are customers with 200,000+ processes running.

Ode is very scalable. It uses multi-threading and can be clustered. Clustering supports automatic failover. In a clustered environment the database is used as a system of reference. Only minimal node synchronization is required.

Performance depends on:

• Message bus
• Process design
• Process persistance
• Event persistance
• Hardware software configuration

Usually the database is the bottleneck. Intalio recommends the use of the best database possible to achieve best performance.

Typical server performance on standard server hardware.is 1 million transaction per day on a database persistant server. Non-persistant servers get 10 million transactions a day.

Process management is handled from the bpms console. On top of that there are process query and debug APIs. Process versioning is done as processes are deployed. By default the new version of a process replaces an older version. It is also possible to have custom versioning by using the server API, to control process lifecycle.
Human Workflow

The workflow components are a set of components that allow you to define your own workflow rules. There are many choices for user interace creation including XForms (Orbeon), TIBCO GI, Ruby etc.

The available task types for workflow are;

• Initiate Process
• People Task
• Notifications

Provides a full security framework, providing typically AAA functionality, by default the security framework is integrated with LDAP.
Server Roadmap and Research

Intalio currently has many features in development. Here are a few:
Simple BPEL - simPEL

Simple BPEL provide an alternative to using visual design tools. It has a simpler syntax. Developers do not need to create BPEL directly. SimpEL is a scripting dialog of BPEL, programmer friendly with a syntax similar to JavaScript. You can mix SimPEL with Java, PHP, Ruby etc.

You could generate BPMN diagrams from SimPEL.

RESTful BPEL

Provides a simpler method of using web services, such as those provided by Amazon, google, salesforce.com etc. Provides the ability to exposing processes as resources.

TAS3

Trsusted Architecture for shared secuirty, a European Union project on how to deal with trust and secuirty, details are available at www.tas3.eu

Feeds

Adding support for BPEL to distribute data on an internet-scale.

Native XQuery Support

Providing a more powerful data manuiplation lanaguge.

Publish-Subscribe

Popular architecture for event distribution, decouple publishers from consumers.

Singleshot

Experimental task manager for process managemen, being developed in Ruby on rails.

Other blog articles in this series:

• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Introducing BPP
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Henry Peyret - Forrester
  
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: BAM Presentation
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Liferay Portal
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Intalio Server Overview

Within the last ten years the idea of the Enterprise Portal has matured to fulfill the promise of the original value statement.

What Is Liferay
IBM Webshphere and Oracle and BEA Portals. Really when you are looking at Enterprise Portals, there are fewer and fewer players. When Oracle purchased BEA that created a combinate of 4 portals under the same roof. What is certain is that only one of those is going to survive. If you are looking to deploy a portal today, there is a lot of risk.

Liferay has a leg up in that they are the leading Open Source vendor. They are also a competitor to Sharepoint. Liferay provides same degree of collaboration, same Sharepoint functionality but in an open way. Also, social software and collaboration is combining into one category to make knowledge workers more productive. Liferay vigorously adheres to standards.

Customers include NBA, Sesame Street (a favorite of mine) and BMW.

What Business Problems does Liferay solve?

• Unify personalization, securit, application/data access and user experience across the enterprise
• Quickly create portals, intranets, shared workspaces, web sites and apps
• Bring together SOA and Web 2.0
• Retain control of your technology and business

In the past Portals have promised more than delivered. Liferay is determined to give as much functionality out of the box to deliver on the original promise and now the technology is mature enough to make it happen. As Ismael mentioned, you are never sure which software is going to survive, and without access to the source code you can never be sure that software will live on. Open Source assures the customer that they always have access to the code to maintain.

Case Studies
HanseMerkur Insurance Group
High availability website - in moving from Web 1.0 to 2.0, we still need to ensure availability but with dynamic content.
Advertising campaigns drove customers to website in waves. Hard deadline set by business because of campaigns. Content was constantly changing. Liferay portal for content publishing with multiple authors. The site went live in 6 weeks. At peak a quarter million pages are served per hour.

Enterprise Integration portal - customer and sales data integrated. Assured online access for entire sales. Single sign on and bringing in a single user experience were key. They received a very high level of acceptance immediately after going live. Adding services quickly is now possible.

Cisco Systems
Wanted to use Liferay for developer network for social collaborative work. Diagram of community of communities, different groups for technologies and solutions. They wanted to foster innovation among partners to accelerate solutions development. They used Liferay to create stickiness and reduced dependence on internal support by providing this community. Phase 1 is building a collaboration platform, Phase 2 will add Business Processes, and Phase 3 is building community enhancement.

Now Bryan goes into demo mode. He shows how easy it was to build a replica of the Nintendo site and compartmentalize the site by creating different articles and combining them on the same page.

Other blog articles in this series:

• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Introducing BPP
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Henry Peyret - Forrester
  
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: BAM Presentation
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Liferay Portal
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Intalio Server Overview

What is Business Intelligence
BI takes data from the operations and submits it to the managing BPM. BAM integrates BI report design into Intalio|Designer. Serves the report to browsers from Intalio|BPMS.

This is a key part of Intalio|BAM. It enables a special way of storing the data occurring in a process. Process variables are not persistent between process instances. The difference between process variables and external variables is that the data from an external variable is stored in a database and can then be used to display information used in reports to make better decisions. Processes, forms, and reports are created in Intalio|Designer. The business analyst and the IT staff work together to define whatever is necessary in Designer, and then deployed to Intalio|Server. As processes are running, the data is saved to a data store to be used by the report generator. This means that the data is displayed in real-time.

Steps to Create a BAM

• Create a metric, something that must be decided at the beginning of the process. When you start designing the process sit down with a high level stakeholder that can define goals and measurements.
• Add metric to process as external variable
• Create a data source
• Define report

Defining variables is a simple operation where you define the name and add specific values and attach a key value, something that identifies it uniquely. The data mapper allows us to track and update the data variable in real-time.

Creating the data source requires knowledge of the target. Intalio can generate the right kind of code for the database you are using.

Defining the report allows you to display the information in the most accessible manner.

Key Performance Indicators are good to put wherever there is a change of state, e.g. from new to revised.

Here Ben went into demo mode. To view a screencast of BAM in action you can go to our Intalio community site.

No other BAM competitor uses external variables. In all the other vendors you have to manually define, select, and map the data. External variables can be simply dragged and dropped into the appropriate area are tracked automatically.

For SAP data business objects, you can drag and drop these the same way. Take the external variable and map them directly into your SAP instance.

Other blog articles in this series:

• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Introducing BPP
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Henry Peyret - Forrester
  
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: BAM Presentation
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Liferay Portal
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Intalio Server Overview
]]> http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-japancon-2008-bam-presentation/feed/ http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-japancon-2008-henry-peyret-forrester/ http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-japancon-2008-henry-peyret-forrester/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2008 02:41:10 +0000 Jonathan Crow News Blog Posts http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-japancon-2008-henry-peyret-forrester/ Next on the agenda for Intalio JapanCon 2008 is the keynote address from Henry Peyret, the Principal Analyst, Forrester Research. His presentation introduced “BPM Trends for Intalio.”

Has worked on BPM for ten years now, started out with EAI, connectors, BAM, ESBs. Henry started out as any good analyst would with numbers showing how BPM is becoming mainstream. The goal now is to not only make it mainstream, but to make it successful.

Market Trends
Business drivers:

• Uncertainty requires agility
• End-to-end process optimization, across silos
• not only about productivity improvements
• Globalization - a single process for everyone
• localization - managing variants

According to customers, the most important benefit is increased productivity. But the most important element for Henry is the ability to change processes quickly and easily. This is becoming key for IT because of the changing regulations, changing requirement, changing business environment.

A BPM Center of Excellence is necessary for results. It is a key factor for success not only for measurement but for implementation. There is a strong correlation with a COE and goals being met. Metrics measured right now, productivity, quality, risk, compliance. Need to include measurements for agility as well.

The answer to what type of BPM project is most underway is modeling. They start with modeling and move on, but the maturity is not quite as far along with other BPM projects. The next level of maturity is execution, and the higher levels are process monitoring and optimization. Most customers have dones some sort of execution but have not yet gone further.

Customers need to correlate and monitor internal and external data. If a company is growing 20% which is a good number for that company, but the industry is growing at 40%, there is a better understanding of how well the company is really doing. Instead of just Key Performance Indicators, which should be called Key Productivity Indicators, we should add Key Quality, Agility, and Risk Indicators (KQI, KAI, and KRI). The goal is to recognize that each of these is supplied by different groups - suppliers, employees, outsourcers, IT systems, partners. For contract monitoring each resource involved should inherit global objectives. Contract monitoring is becoming a key area for BPM in the near future.

Software-as-a-Service, it will be important to externalize these processes to partners, across different types of repositories an important aspect of contract monitoring. Choose the right level of BPP that is not too simple but not too complex.

What is next
Dynamic Business Apps. We build applications that are agile, flexible, able to change. Characteristics:

• user-centric
• process-oriented
• flexible
• collaborative
• context-driven
• dynamic - can change in business time without programmers
• information-rich

Telco’s originally took 2 years to deliver applications on their platforms. The next generations took 4 months, then 1 month. Now with the fourth generation it takes one week. That is the type of dynamic bussiness application development process that needs to occur now. These apps will represent a fraction of the IT portfolio but will be the most strategic. These Dynamic Business Apps need to be tested.

Recommendations:

• Bring a BPMS center of excellence to your organization
• BPMS is a good candidate for Dynamic Business Apps
• Continue to watch the most innovative BPMS providing competitive advantages

Other blog articles in this series:

• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Introducing BPP
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Henry Peyret - Forrester
  
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: BAM Presentation
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Liferay Portal
• Intalio JapanCon 2008: Intalio Server Overview
]]> http://www.intalio.com/news/intalio-japancon-2008-henry-peyret-forrester/feed/