Business Rules Forum

The Business Rules Forum is coming up on October 26-30 in Orlando, and I’ll be back there again this year to speak. You can find my coverage of last year’s event here, and my presentation on BPM, BR and BI is available here. I found last year’s event definitely worthwhile, although I was left with the feeling that we still had a long way to go in terms of creating the necessary about of synergy between BPM and BR. A lot has happened in a year, and this year I’m speaking on mixing rules and process:

There are many techniques for combining rules or decisioning capability with business process management (BPM), ranging from using simple expression engines embedded within a BPM system to a full integration between separate BRM and BPM systems.

This session takes a close look at what rules functionality that the BPM systems offer, and the key characteristics that identify which rules and decisions should remain in the domain of the BPM system, and which should be entrusted to a full-strength business rules management system. What you will will learn:

  • The current state of BPM and BRM
  • How BPM and BRM interact
  • Where your rules belong

You can find the conference brochure/schedule here, and online registration here. The organizers have offered my readers 10% off the conference registration if you use the promotional code 8SPSK when you register, and you can also get an early bird discount if you register by September 19th. I don’t get a referral fee from this, it’s just there as a courtesy for any of you who are interested in attending, although in the spirit of full disclosure, my travel expenses to attend are covered by the conference since I’m a speaker.

Another new BPMN book

Another new BPMN book, this one by Stephen White (arguably the inventor of BPMN) and Derek Miers: BPMN Modeling and Reference Guide. It won’t be released until September, with a public launch at the Gartner BPM summit in DC. From the product description:

This book is for both business users and process modeling practitioners alike. Part I provides an easily understood introduction to the key components of BPMN (put forward in a user-friendly fashion). Starting off with simple models, it progresses into more sophisticated patterns. Exercises help cement comprehension and understanding (with answers available online). Part II provides a detailed and authoritative reference on the precise semantics and capabilities of the standard.

I wrote earlier this week about the just-released BPMN book by Tom Debevoise and Rick Geneva; this is obviously the year that BPMN goes mainstream, or at least makes the attempt. White and Miers’ book, although a bit longer than Debevoise and Geneva’s, is also more than twice the price, and also doesn’t seem to offer an e-book option: hard to become a staple of every process-oriented person in an organization at a $40 price point.

I’ll be very interested to read Bruce Silver‘s review of these books. Unless, of course, he’s writing his own. 🙂

Microguide to BPMN

I noticed in one of Tom Debevoise’s posts last week that he recently co-authored the book The Microguide to Process Modeling in BPMN, and on closer examination, I see that his co-author is Rick Geneva of Intalio, with Ismael Ghalimi writing the foreword.

From the product description on Amazon:

With over fifty implementations listed, Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) is an increasingly successful Object Management Group (OMG) standard. Whether you are in government, manufacturing or retailing you can accurately depict your processes in BPMN! Yet, OMG BPMN specification 1.1 is abstract, lengthy and complicated. So, learning to use BPMN can be daunting. So you will need the strait forward [sic] information in this book. This guide gathers all the ideas, design, and problem solving of BPMN into one simple, focused book, and offers concrete true-life examples that explain BPMN’s approach to process modeling.

I haven’t had a chance to read it yet so can’t compare it to the many other sources of BPMN instruction out there, such as the recently-released BPMN, the Business Process Modeling Notation Pocket Handbook. Unfortunately, Debevoise and Geneva’s book doesn’t appear to be available as an e-book.

The people part of SOA

I was going to just link to Mike Kavis’ post on the Top 10 Reasons Why People Are Making SOA Fail, but I wanted to added some of my own comments. By the way, he’s talking primarily about IT people, not business people, in the fail part of the equation.

Number 1 reason: they fail to explain SOA’s business value. Kavis recommends (and I completely agree) starting with business problems first, specifically using BPM as the “killer app” to justify the existence of SOA.

He continues with a number of cultural and organizational issues, such as change management and executive sponsorship, then discusses a few of the flat-out IT failure points: not having the skills to actually do SOA (and not getting the outside help required), trying to do it on the cheap, thinking of SOA as a one-time implementation project rather than an ongoing architecture, and neglecting SOA governance.

His final reason for failure is allowing the vendors to drive the architecture:

[T]he vendors promise flawless integration if you purchase all of your tools within their stack. The reality is, they have purchased so many products from other companies that their stacks do not deliver any better integration than if you bought the tools from a variety of vendors.

In the face of recent acquisitions, this could not be more accurate.

Where the hell is Matt?

Want to improve your mood? Turn the sound up and watch this, preferably in high-quality mode:

Matt Harding traveled the world doing a goofy dance, and somehow it became an uplifting video, spotlighting both differences and similarities around the globe. Yes, it’s sponsored by a chewing gum company (who have only a small mention at the end of the credits), but it’s still amazing. Every time I watch it, I get a thrill when I see the places that I’ve visited, and hanker for many more of the ones that I haven’t.

The hauntingly beautiful music is available for purchase on iTunes.

BPMN 1.1 poster

Previously, I posted about the free BPMN 1.0 poster available for download from ITPoster.net, and now the Business Process Technology Group at the Hasso Plattner Institute has published one for BPMN 1.1. Both provide a good quick reference; the BPT version has just the graphical object notation, while the ITPoster version also includes some patterns and antipatterns.

Also, check out BPT’s BPMN Corner, which has a number of good BPMN links, including Oryx, a web-based BPMN editor, and BPMN stencils for Visio and OmniGraffle.

Enterprise Mashups webinar

SnapLogic sponsored a webinar today featuring (Michael) Coté of Redmonk, entitled Enterprise Mashups, RIAs and Cloud Computing.

Coté started out talking about why we want to do all of this, namely, the goal of moving to a connected model, where value is increased through increased connectivity. Mashups bring together information from multiple sources, thereby connecting those systems and services in order to add value.

He considers three aspects of applications:

  • User interface, either a web app or an RIA
  • Business logic in the application code
  • Infrastructure, either on-premise or in the cloud

RIAs (rich internet applications) are user interfaces that mimic rich desktop user interfaces, but are the front-end for internet-connected applications, built using tools such as AJAX, Flex/AIR and Sliverlight. These are typically applications (business or leisure) rather than single-purpose functionality such as search.

Moving to the bottom of the stack, cloud computing offers a faster, cheaper and more scalable infrastructure, particularly for starting up a new service when the potential load is unknown.

One of the challenges is in integrating systems when you move to the cloud: cloud to cloud and cloud to on-premise, where the latter has the challenge of integrating across the firewall. Data integration is critical so that you don’t end up with silos of information locked into your applications’ data stores.

Chris Marino of SnapLogic followed up with a few slides about their view of application integration, moving from the bad old days of point-to-point custom systems integration to a utopia that uses SnapLogic as a hub to integrate applications using web standards (HTTP, REST, XML). SnapLogic connectors and servers can be combined for all sorts of data connectivity from cloud to cloud, cloud to client, and cloud to on-premise systems. They provide a graphical tool for designing a data flow between sources, including transformations, or for exposing an enterprise data source directly in a browser for mashing up using other tools. He moved on to a lightning-quick demo showing an interface to Salesforce.com data, allowing the data to be extracted to another system or even just to the browser as input to a mashup.

SnapLogic has both a free, open source community edition and a fully-supported enterprise edition available by paid subscription.

Companies that get it

Another company that is getting how marketing 2.0 works: Metastorm is publishing podcasts on iTunes (that is, you can get them without providing your personal information to Metastorm) as well as having a YouTube channel and customer success stories on their own site that don’t require registration.

I posted a while back about how Active Endpoints is publishing webinar replays (video) as well as audio podcasts and product release information (PDF) all in an RSS feed that I subscribe to in iTunes, no signup required. IDS Scheer has ARIS TV, also on YouTube. More companies are realizing that blogging is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to new ways to interact with their audience.

Examples of companies that don’t get it: one who sent me an unsolicited email with a 2MB product brochure attached, with the comment:

As I see from your blog that you don’t like registering for basic information (which we currently require you to do at the moment on our website – although it is currently up for discussion!) I have attached our corporate overview brochure for you and would be happy to send you any other info you would find useful.

The point is not that I don’t like registering on vendor websites, it’s that no one likes registering on vendor websites. I’m not looking for special treatment, I want companies to change the way that they interact with anyone looking for information: the easier to you make it for someone to get information about your company and product, the more likely that they are to return to your site.

Oh yeah, while you’re all at it, can you please publish full feeds for your company blogs? With over 250 subscriptions in my reader, the chance of me clicking through to a vendor blog to read the entire post is near nil.

I’m back!

I was off last week for a vacation in Iceland, which explains why it was pretty quiet around here. It wasn’t my first trip there; I also visited in December 2003, at the complete opposite in terms of daylight hours, and loved it at both times of year for different reasons. I also had the opportunity to try a completely different way of information access while traveling: I turned off email forwarding to my Blackberry — my provider’s roaming rates are outrageous — and used my iPod Touch wherever I could get free open wifi, such as at our guesthouse or many of the cafes in Reykjavik. Although the iPod Touch interface is vastly inferior to the Blackberry when it comes to composing email for those of us who can touch-type with our thumbs, it’s fabulous for reading email as well as web browsing, which is all that I wanted to do while on vacation. Interestingly enough, after my friends became aware of the device’s capabilities, one of them asked me if I would use my “computer” to look up an address for her, showing that any device with a certain level of functionality will be perceived by the non-tech-savvy as a computer, regardless of form factor.

Today is Canada Day, a national holiday celebrating the country’s confederation in 1867, but Oracle conveniently scheduled their BEA strategy briefing at noon so I’ll be spending at least a couple of hours at my desk before heading out to enjoy a day of beautiful weather and some spectacular fireworks in the evening.

Canadian Copyright — or is that Copywrong?

Off topic for Column 2, but hey, it’s Friday.

For those of you who have never seen Canadian government at work, it can be pretty entertaining sometimes, and never more than when there’s a lively debate going on during Question Period. Our big debate now is the newly-introduced copyright bill, which blatantly panders to the U.S. media industry; not surprisingly, a lot of us have pretty serious problems with it, and have been talking to our government representatives. Jim Prentice, the Industry Minister who presented the bill, either doesn’t really understand it or just isn’t very good at speaking about it:

The best source for information about what’s happening with the bill is Michael Geist’s site, a law professor who has analyzed the proposed bill in great detail and blogs about what it would mean to the average person, but you’ll also find a lot by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing, who is Canadian and very vocal against any government interfering in its citizens rights. We’re also starting to see independent artists speak out against this, who feel that this prevents people from easily discovering them, and know that most of the money collected from lawsuits just goes to the lawyers anyway.

If you’re Canadian and care about this issue, join the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group and take the time to send your MP a letter, using the Copyright for Canadians template if you can’t think of what to write yourself. This isn’t just a techie issue, as both Geist and Doctorow explain: it criminalizes day-to-day activities of anyone who makes a backup copy of their DVDs as a guard against damage, or scan and email their kids’ class photo to their relatives, or rip your music CDs for your iPod if the CD has any sort of copy protection on it.