SOA meets BPM

Prof. Dr. Michael Gröschel

m.groeschel@hs-mannheim.de

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Structure

• Learning targets

• BPM (Business Process Management)

• Why business agility is required today

• What SOA claims and how SOA makes the

agile business happen

• Questions and discussions

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Learning targets

• You have a basic understanding about BPM

and how companies use it

• Get an idea how SOA can be part of the

solution to create an agile company

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BP(M)

• What is a Business Process?– A business process is a collection of interrelated tasks,

which accomplish a particular goal.

– Focus on value for the customer

– Elements: Activities and events

– Different views: Functions, Data, Organization, …

• In process-oriented organizations the business processes are the business.

• So what about Business Process Management?

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BPM = Business Process Management

• BPM is a systematic approach for improving a company's business processes.

• BEA: “BPM is a strategy for managingand improving business performancethrough continuous optimization ofbusiness processes in a closed-loopcycle of modeling, execution, andmeasurement.”

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BPM

• Why do companies apply BPM?

– Try „ARIS TV – Episode 1 –Why do companies need BPM?” http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=elT4UK31w5g

• Today for large companies: analysis anddocumentation of processes are standard

– Complete loop complex and cost-intensive

– Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME, german: KMU) do have a backlog

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• Practical application requires

methods, policies, metrics, management

practices, tools.

• Business teams use specific tools, e.g.

– eEPK / ARIS-Toolset, IDS Scheer

– BPMN (Business Process Modeling

Notation) as a growing standard

BPM

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BPM, agile Business and IT

• Increasing dynamic of business: customers, competitors, products

• IT as an enabler for business

• Demand for IT solutions, which can be adoptedfast

• Can IT meet these demands?– Today, process models often serve

only as a starting point

– In a lot of cases there is no full BPM loop

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• Fully functional BPM requires not onlymodeling but execution, monitoring andanalysis

• Traditional IT-Systems implement the processes– Business Process and functionality

build (almost) unbreakable rocks

– Changes require IT-Skills anda (time-consuming) project

– This is in opposition to business agility andthe need for easily adoptable IT-systems

Process execution(„the traditional way“)

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There is a promise …

• SOA claims to provide IT-Systems that can be

adopted fast to changing business processes

• We need to explain:

– What is SOA?

– How does it work?

– More flexibility through SOA

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What is SOA?

• Service-Oriented Architecture

• Architectural style for it-infrastructure,

development and management

• All functionality is provided in distinct units,

called services

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• Services give a specific (business-related) functionality

• Independent of operating system andprogramming language

• Distributed over the network

• Combined together and reused to realizebusiness processes

• Extracted from existing applications or suppliedby external organisations

• Example: IT-related service: credit card check

What are Services in SOA?

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How does it work? (Technology)

• Source: BPMN-modeled processes

– Model consist of 2 Views

• Graphical Model

• XML

– XML-Document contains (web) service calls

– Ideally: 1 Process activity suits 1 Service

• Runtime Environment: Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)

– Software that provides a lot of functionality

– Proces-Engine to execute the process

– Service repository includes all available services

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How does it work? (Technology)

Source: http://www.inubit.com/3276_de.html

Service Repository

Process Manager

uses …

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More flexibility through SOA

Traditional IT-Architecture

• Processes „hard-coded“ in software

• Inflexible „Rock“-Model

• Change requires pro-gramming by IT-Staff

Service-Oriented Architecture

• Functionality in small, reusable pieces

• Services can berearranged easily (anddeployed into ESB) byprocess designer(Orchestration)

• „Stone“-Model

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Finally: SOA meets BPM!

• SOA greatly simplifies BPM implementationsand is an excellent technical base for contineousbusiness process improvement

• Business and IT are growing together

• CIO.com: “If an SOA provides roadsto your information, then BPM is thecar that leverages that infrastructureto accomplish something useful.”http://www.cio.com/article/106609/ABC_An_Introduction_to_Business_Process_Management_BPM_?page=4#soa

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