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

142 Chapter 7 Working from Your Processes to the Clouds
Drilling Down on BPM
BPM is best defined as applying appropriate rules in an agreed-upon, logical
multistep sequence in order to leverage information among participating
systems and to visualize and share application services, including the
creation of a common abstract process that spans both internal and external
systems. This definition holds true regardless of whether or not the business
processes are automated.
The use of a common process model that spans multiple systems and
companies for application integration provides many advantages, including
Modeling, or the ability to create a common, agreed-upon process
among computer systems, either on-premise or cloud-based, automating
the integration of all information systems to react in real time to
business events such as increased consumer demand, material shortages,
and quality problems.
Monitoring, or the ability to analyze all aspects of the business and enterprise
or trading community to determine the current state of the process
in real time.
Optimization, or the ability to redefine the process at any given time in
support of the business and thus make the process more efficient.
Abstraction, or the ability to hide the complexities of the local applications
from the business users and have the business users work with a
common set of business semantics.
There are three types of processes to visualize enterprise and cross-enterprise
processes: internal, shared, and specialized processes.
Internal processes exist at the intracompany level, allowing the business
user to define common processes that span only systems that are within
the enterprise and are not visible to the trading partners or to communitywide
processes. For example, the process of hiring an employee may span
several systems within the enterprise but should not be visible to processes
that span an enterprise or trading community or other organizations.
When considering cloud computing, the internal processes may span onpremise
or cloud-based systems, but they are internal nonetheless.
Shared processes exist between companies and consist of a set of agreedupon
procedures for exchanging information and automating business
processes within a community. These are good candidates for processes
that should be hosted on cloud computing platforms.