Business Process ExperienceAnd a Mission for SOA

Satish R. ThatteSoftware Architect

Microsoft

Perfume for the King

Beer for the Masses

Business processes and systems of record for business transactions are not a new phenomenon! The silver bullets of process models solve 10% of the problem if that (remember the parable of the man under the lamp-post)

What is a Business Process?

A business process is what business applications for ERP, CRM, PLM, SCM, .. provide when customized to fit my business practices

A business process is what those expensive armies of consultants “re-engineer and implement” blowing my budget without improving my ROI and results

ERP etc solve 30% of the problem – much better than 10% but it still leaves a lot of frustrated customers questioning the value of their investment

A business process is the orchestration of services

A business process is a model for handling business eventsA business process is a human-centric workflow

Technology

Common Packaging with Data Management All Too Frequent Business Reality

The Core Problem of Business Process Support SystemsHelp the 3D world of real business process deal with the 2D world of LOB Apps

90% of Business Process Cannot and Will Not be Modeled

E-Mail, IM, Voice

Collaboration, Sharing

Data Access &Transactions

B2B Automated

Business Protocols

Data Access &Transactions

DataIn

Flight

LandedData

Business Process Applications The Integrating Principle is A Common User Experience Model

not a Common Data Model

Business Process Applications A Revolution in the Making!

Deal with the Unsolved Problem of Business Process Experience

E-Mail, IM, Voice

Collaboration, Sharing

Tasks, Alerts Data Access &

Transactions

Tasks, Alerts

B2B Automated

Business Protocols

Focus ofTraditionalProcessAutomationModels(e.g., BPEL)

Focus ofBusinessProcessExperienceModels(e.g., LOBi)

Data Access &Transactions

DemoLOB Systems should be like the perfect butler

Office Business Platform and LOBi• Microsoft announced the Office Business Platform

(OBP) at TechEd 2006 in June– OBP is a comprehensive business process platform built

around SharePoint Server– Line of Business interoperability (LOBi) services for

SharePoint were also announced at TechEd 2006• LOBi is the subject of this presentation• LOBi will provide capabilities focused on rich clients

More information at:http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/

jun06/06-12OBAPR.mspx

The Semantic Web of Business EntitiesBusiness Entities Reflect Integrated Ontology of

Business Data and Functions

Customer

Order

Issue

Product

Supplier

Constructing the Business Entity WebBeyond Portals

• The world-wide web works because it is based on stereotyped models for naming and linking, access and content– HTTP verbs for resource access– HTML/MIME for resource content– URIs for resource naming and linking

• The business application layer in an enterprise is very different– The information is often locked up in fragmented applications – Every application has its own specialized user experience– If there are programmable access points for business content they are

structured as idiosyncratic APIs often using proprietary access protocols• An essential step in constructing a business entity web is to construct and

apply standardized REST-like models to business application content and APIs– SOA and service composition models play a key role in the mapping layer– Content is XML but reusable UI models are challenging (rich, thin & mobile)

SOA meets the Semantic WebEntity Web Services are the Business Ontology Layer

Please Put the A Back in SOAAdapters

LOBSystemsEntity

WebServices

ServiceAgent

ServiceAgent

Cache

Document/PIMCollaboration

Content

Context-SpecificBusiness Data

User

LOBi CRTLOBi CRT config

config

Svc AgentSvc Agent

User

LOBi SolutionLOBi Solution

LOBi Development Architecture

Model Type Library

(Entity Proxies)

EWS Interfaces

DeploymentPackage

Adapters

LOB Systems

EWS

Model

OB Parts

Layouts

•Contexts•Rules•Bindings•Data Sources•Services

Model Designer

ApplicationDesigner

EWSDesigner

Cache

How Can the Academic Community Help Solve BP Problems?

• Ontology mapping at Many Levels– Obvious: Constructing the EWS Layer– Less Obvious: Solve the tension between the

requirements of an enterprise ontology of business entities and the workability of an ISV ecosystem

– Related to Mathias Weske’s ontology reasoning??• The marriage of CEP, EDA and BRE looks far more

interesting to me as a “process modeling” methodology than Petri nets, Pi, BPEL etc.– It is far more flexible, easy to change etc

• Few or none of the problems that Peter solves – But it does have a problem of predictability