Make Your Business More Flexible with Scalable Business Process Management Solutions

Agenda

• Architecture for scalable BPM solutions – Introduction – The role and shortcomings of SOA – Integrating legacy applications with the BPMS– Building high-performance BPM solutions – The role of a business rules management system

in your architecture – Architecture to support event-driven business

processes to reduce latency in business processes and the company as a whole

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Our Speaker

Eric Roch• GM and Chief Technologist for Perficient’s Enterprise

Application Integration practice• 25+ years of experience in Information Technology • Previous roles include: executive level management,

technical architect, and software development in top tier technology organizations including TIBCO Software and Deloitte Consulting.

• Strategic planning and commercialization of methodologies and software

• Technical architecture for multi-platform application and systems integration at organizations.

• Guest speaker and author

Find this and other free webinars and presentations at www.Perficient.com/webinars

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Architecture Consistency

AccidentalRigid

Silo-Oriented

LayeredExtensible

Service-Oriented

Value in reusable services and also architecture consistency

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Barriers to the goal

• Information throughout the enterprise

• Silos of data• Decentralized control• No one single solution• No cohesive strategy• Legacy systems difficult

to make part of the strategy

SOA Facts

• SOA is about architecture • Does not implicitly improve governance, IT

strategy, or business alignment• In practice is often lead by IT architects with

little business input or impact • Top-down, strategic SOA has been

disappointing • There is more to building modern application

than SOA• Total modern architecture includes SOA,

BPM, data management, EDA, legacy modernization and Web 2.0 technologies

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SOA Entry Points

• Process innovation and optimization via BPM

• SOA for application integration • SOA as enabling infrastructure –

portals, information management, reusable software components

• SOA connectivity – B2B, portal, multi-channel

• Information management – information as a service, business intelligence, master data management

Pick the path to quick wins and ROI

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Enterprise Service BusH

TT

P

HT

TP

/S

SO

AP

/HT

TP

SO

AP

/JM

S

FT

P

SM

TP

EM

S/J

MS

ED

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Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

Credit Check

Place Order

Check Quantit

y

Issue Invoice

AlertLargeOrder

NotifyCustomer

ProcessOrder

CheckCustomerAccount

• Connect• Transport• Route

Services BackboneEnterprise Service Bus

(ESB)

• Mediate• Event notification• Exception Handling

Abstract the data format and the behavior of legacy systems

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The SOA Information Gap

“SOA by itself does nothing to address the question of how data should be managed within this architecture. ... data remains fragmented despite the best efforts to rationalize it. This issue is motivating the creation of a new class of middleware that Forrester calls the information fabric.”

The Forrester Report Information Fabric: Enterprise Data Virtualization

"You will waste your investment in SOA unless you have enterprise information that SOA can exploit."

Gartner

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DataWarehouse

PackagedApplication

LegacyApplication

Data Virtualization Layer

• Data federation for consistent packaging of data• Leverages understanding of metadata relationships• Applies consistent rules to data• Centralized control and maintenance• Flexibility to change information sources and formats

Create QuoteProcess Flow

Trigger

Create EstimateProcess Flow

Trigger

Information as a Service(Shared Metadata)

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Business Process Management and Workflow

• The term Business Process Management refers to activities performed by businesses to optimize and adapt their processes.

• Although it can be said that organizations have always been using BPM, a new impetus based on the advent of software tools which allow for • Direct execution of the business processes without a

costly and time intensive development of the required software.

• In addition, these tools can also monitor the execution of the business processes, providing managers of an organization with the means to analyze their performance and make changes to the original processes in real-time

• BPM has a tight link to componentized and service oriented IT architecture

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BPM and Services

ServiceX

ServiceU

ServiceY

ServiceZ

Human Task A

Human Task D

Human Task F

Human Task B

Human Task C

Workflow

Invoke

Invoke Invoke Invoke

• Workflows implement business processes

• Workflow engine navigates the network of activities

• Typically invoking automatic (service choreography) or manual activities

• Mostly visual programming/modeling

Process Orchestration Layer - BPMS

• Designer and repository• Execution engine • Database – case state • Database – case history• Case history reporting –

KPIs, task timings, timings by role

• Starting a new case is resource intensive

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StateManagement

DesignRepository

ProcessHistory

Execution Engine

Scaling BPM Application Architecture

• Does not burden BPMS engine with complex business logic

• Does not add business data to BPMS state database

• Application and presentation layers are needed

• The application layer manages events and transaction state

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BRMS Architecture

• Manages the lifecycle of the rules

• Author rules • Execute stateless rules • Statistical reports about

rule execution • Rule execution is

embedded in business applications – e.g. a decision service

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Using BRMS in BPMS

• Lifecycle of rules are external to the BPMS

• Business processes “call” rules e.g. via services

• Rules make a stateless decision

• Rules have to have a driving workflow or application

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RuleRepository

RuleEngine

RuleAuthoring

BPMS

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Event-driven Architecture

• Event-driven architecture (EDA) is a software architecture pattern promoting the production, detection, consumption of, and reaction to events

• Complex event processing (CEP) consists in processing many events happening across all the layers of an organization, identifying the most meaningful events within the event cloud, analyzing their impact, and taking subsequent action in real time.

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CEP Architecture

• Consistent operational rules applied to business events

• Declarative rules and implicit state management

• Event driven, non-linear, closed-loop, agile business processes

• Component failure (fine grain) – outage (logical /predictive)

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ConceptState

RuleBases

BPMS

CEPEngine

Logical Events – Notifications, Consequences Actions

SOA

Business Applications

Fine-grainBusiness Events

System(s) of Record

Integration andBusiness Components

Flexible Workflows

ESBEvent

Channel(s)

CEP High-level Architecture Patterns

• Situation awareness is about "knowing" the state of the product, person, document, or entity of interest at any point in time.

• Sense and respond is about detecting some significant fact about the product, person, document or entity of interest, and responding accordingly

• Track and trace is about tracking the product, person, document or entity of interest over time and tracing pertinent facts

CEP Benefits

• CEP will manage events, state transitions, and event correlation reducing code in the application layer – Control logic – Persistence logic – Business Rules

• Correlated events will drive business processes • The same events can drive operational efficiencies and longer-

term strategic decision support • Rules are less complex with the event driven concepts

– Persistent business objects – Known context of the event

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• Target critical business events • Identify candidate business (sub)process

to automate – benefits/pain-points • Inventory relevant events, rules and

concepts• Project LoE(s) and Roadmap • Integrate systems used in key business

processes – event enable • Define process activities • Mine candidate rules • Model events, rules and concepts• Iterate through business processes

Business Events and BPM Roadmap

Contacts

• Contacts – www.perficient.com– Eric.Roch@perficient.com– Blog: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/the-soa-blog/

• Google “SOA blog”

– Lindedin SOA SIG Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=36604

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About Perficient

Perficient is a leading information technology consulting firm serving

clients throughout North America.

We help clients implement business-driven technology solutions that

integrate business processes, improve worker productivity, increase

customer loyalty and create a more agile enterprise to better

respond to new business opportunities.

PRFT Profile

Founded in 1997

Public, NASDAQ: PRFT

2010 Revenue of $215 million

20 major market locations throughout North America— Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland,

Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fairfax, Houston, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Jose, St. Louis and Toronto

1,500+ colleagues

Dedicated solution practices

500+ enterprise clients (2010) and 85% repeat business rate

Alliance partnerships with major technology vendors

Multiple vendor/industry technology and growth awards

Perficient brings deep solutions expertise and offers a complete set of flexible services to help clients implement business-driven IT solutions

Our Solutions Expertise & Services

Business-Driven Solutions• Enterprise Portals• SOA and Business Process

Management• Business Intelligence• User-Centered Custom Applications• CRM Solutions• Enterprise Performance

Management• Customer Self-Service• eCommerce & Product Information

Management• Enterprise Content Management• Industry-Specific Solutions• Mobile Technology• Security Assessments

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Perficient Services End-to-End Solution Delivery IT Strategic Consulting IT Architecture Planning Business Process & Workflow

Consulting Usability and UI Consulting Custom Application Development Offshore Development Package Selection, Implementation

and Integration Architecture & Application Migrations Education

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