Cloud Computing and SOA Convergence in Your Enterprise: A Step ...

128 Chapter 7 Working from Your Processes to the Clouds
end of the chapter. This approach provides a better context for that information
and ends with a good foundation of what BPM is in the context of cloud
computing, SOA, and architecture in general.
Moreover, we are using approaches taken directly from SOA. As you may
recall from earlier in the book, we leverage SOA approaches because they
provide a great way to break down the architecture to its functional primitive
and rebuild it as information, services, and now a process model. Once that
is complete, it is much easier to mix and match the architectural components
between on-premise and cloud-based systems and place them where they
can do the most good and cost the least.
In this chapter, we talk about a process, or a sequence of events that leverage
services, typically as it relates to the automation of a business process.
For the most part, we talk about how these processes are integrated, which is
called business process management, or BPM, although the definition of BPM
depends somewhat on who is saying it or what technology leverages the notion.
We focus somewhere between the technology and the business concepts
for this chapter.
What Is BPM
BPM may be applied to any number of business events, including
Processing a customer request
Manufacturing an automobile
Delivering a product to a customer
Processing a financial transaction
In general, BPM logic addresses only process flow and service invocation.
It is not traditional programming logic, such as user interface processing,
database updates, or the execution of transactions. Indeed, in most BPM
scenarios, the process logic is separated from the application logic. It functions
solely to coordinate or manage the information flow or invocation of
application services between many source and target applications that exist
within organizations.
The notion is fairly simple: place a layer of control logic on top of the services
and systems that allows the control logic to bind the services into a single,
unified, multistep business process that can carry out the unique functions of
the business process. It must do so in the correct order; with the proper infor-