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

Value of BPM for the Clouds 139
Value of BPM for the Clouds
What does BPM bring to the cloud computing table It is really another
complete layer on the stack, over and above on-premise or cloud-based systems.
Or, to be more specific:
A single instance of BPM typically spans many instances of systems, onpremise
or cloud-based.
BPM defines a master application (or applications) that has visibility
into many encapsulated services and information.
BPM leads with a process model, moves information among applications,
and invokes internal services in support of that model.
BPM is independent of the services. Changes can be made to the processes
without having to change the source or target systems, on-premise
or cloud-based.
BPM is strategic, leveraging business rules to determine how systems
should interact and better leverage the business value from each system
through a common abstract business model.
Let’s walk through a simple example. Let’s say you want to build a model
airplane, and you have three main processes:
1. The process of cutting the parts.
2. The process of assembling the parts.
3. Finishing the airplane (painting and attaching the decals).
These are the higher-level processes; of course, many processes will be
contained inside these processes.
In the terms of BPM, we can define the three main processes as
1. Cut parts.
2. Assemble parts.
3. Finish airplane.
And we have to build these processes on top of three source and target
systems:
1. Inventory (SAP; on-premise)
2. Sales (Salesforce.com; application-as-a-service, storage-as-a-service)
3. Manufacturing (Amazon AWS; information-as-a-service)