SOA

The last item in the program here at IBM IMPACT before I go speak is a panel of General Managers led by Rob Leblanc. Interesting points included: Is a connected car a mobile data center or just a big, complex mobile device? Or both. How do CIOs partner with COOs to drive smarter process and [...]

Day 2 at IBM IMPACT kicked off with another IBM keynote. Dave Farrell got it started telling us that IBM got record attendance this year and that customers will be talking about how “business in motion” has helped them. First up is Jim King of BMI – a licensing and rights management company in the [...]

Blueriq (previously Aquima) started as a business unit about 15 years ago by Everest (a consulting firm) and began developing a software solution. It now provides a complete business process management software solution with support for processes, intelligent forms, case management etc built around a powerful business rules engine. They have a strong presence in [...]

We recently posted an update to a white paper called “Becoming a Decision-centric Organization” to our site. Having worked with a fair number of organizations whose success or failure is determined by the decisions they make I see many that are handicapped by systems and approaches that are centered on processes or functions. Becoming more [...]

A quick bit of Decision Management Solutions news here on the blog today. We are delighted to announce that Gagan Saxena, previously the CIO of Apple Vacations, has joined Decision Management Solutions as VP of Consulting and one of our Principal Consultants. Gagan brings more than 20 years experience in enterprise architecture, reengineering, organizational change [...]

7. Why do I need more technology to handle business logic? This excuse comes up both in forward-looking companies that have made an effort to standardize on a set of technology and on technology-resistors who like to stick only with technology they have been using for years. Let’s drill into some of the specific excuses [...]

Johan Gerber of MasterCard kicked things off on day 2. MasterCard does not actually issue the cards with their logo on, they are a technology company that provides a network to link consumers, 32,000,000 businesses and 22,000 card issuers. The network is very high performance, handling 100 pieces of information and processing each transaction in [...]

After a great introductory session from Walter Isaacson (biographer of Einstein, Franklin and Jobs), we kicked off the main session at IBM’s largest IMPACT conference with over 8,500 attendees with a focus on re-thinking IT. Marie Wieck started by discussing how core applications are changing. IBM claims that $5Trillion run on IBM hardware. These systems [...]

2011 has been a great year for market awareness of Decision Management as an approach and of the value of Decision Management Systems. Product, partnership, acquisition and funding announcements have enhanced the available technology. As vendors continue to improve and enhance their product offerings to fully support Decision Management this is only going to reinforce and further [...]

Erick Brethenoux, Pierre-Henri Clouin and Asit Dan presented on IBM’s Decision Management approach – a nice chance to see both the Business Analytics and WebSphere bits of IBM talking about the same problem. CEOs consistently tell IBM that volatility, uncertainty and complexity are continuing issues. CIOs with a mandate to transform the business are responding [...]

I got an overview of JBoss’s new intelligent, integrated enterprise approach as well some of their new product announcements. They are adding new data services, BPEL support, productizing their event/rules combination and adding some new connectivity elements. The world has obviously changed in the last few years. The fully automated processes of the past, JBoss [...]

Steve Mills kicked off day 2 to talk about the kind of IT architecture that supports business agility. Your IT architecture, he says, must enable business processes run reliably and securely across application silos. Business must own their processes and their data, not have them be subsumed into siloed packaged applications. IT must enable these [...]

Nicklas Holmberg from the Lund School of Economics and Management in Sweden presented on the importance of separation of concerns in business process design. His work has been in healthcare, particularly around a system for vaccination management, and is focused on business rules and a business rules-centric approach to designing services and processes. Nicklas began [...]

Nancy Pearson and David Farrell kicked off the main event. 8,000 people at IBM IMPACT apparently and Nancy introduced the key themes – helping companies optimize for growth and focus on delivering results. The topics are based on a continued focus on getting business and IT to work together (a key theme of Decision Management [...]

Insurers face an explosion of direct sales channels: websites, mobile and call centers, with the rapidly evolving world of social media opening up even more opportunities. Driving consistent customer treatments and profitable direct sales across dynamic distribution channels, while effectively managing risk, is a huge challenge. As Deb pointed out, linking all customer communication together [...]

Insurers face huge challenges with their installed base of legacy mainframe applications.  Many systems are 15-20 years old and are impeding insurers’ ability to respond to the market demands for new products and to the increased rate of consumerization. Maintenance costs are high and staffing challenges continue to mount. Growing consumer buying power will force [...]

I was presenting this week to a company that asked what trends I saw in business rules. I had my ow thoughts but I also reached out to some other experience business rules implementers. Here’s what we came up with: A broader context for business rules Business rules are increasingly adopted as part of a [...]

Randy Heffner had a post late last year that I just got to – Business 2011 Gets Faster; Business Rules And SOA Policy Get More Important. Randy makes the key point that while the pace of change means you cannot afford to lock up your business logic in traditional code, you also can’t just let [...]

Cross-posted at ebizQ My old buddy Jim Sinur is presenting on one of his favorite topics – why rules are important business rules in BPM. Rules are moving, he says, inside-out in process. As processes become less structured and more fluid, the rules go beyond the “happy path” and start to guide the process dynamically. [...]