There's another exciting ebizQ webinar coming up on March 28, with a killer topic for BPM wonks, despite the slightly ungainly but entirely appropriate title. It's "Taking Enterprise Mash-ups From Buzzword to Business Reality – Gain One Integrated View of BI, CRM, ERP and Other Enterprise Systems."
The speaker is Paul Wlodarczyk, VP of Solutions Consulting at JustSystems, possibly the largest software company the most of us had never heard of before now. Just Systems claims to be Japan's largest software company. It is likely best known in North America for xfy, software that enables creation of XML-compliant composite applications atop IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes platform. As I've opined here previously, the latest Lotus Notes represents significant opportunity to build business processes into applications and services. Which I'm convinced is a good thing.
Paul was previously "a Service Line Manager for a content lifecycle consultancy with Xerox Global Services." So my semi-educated guess is the guys knows a little bit about how BI (business intelligence), CRM, ERP, and other applications get mashed up in ways that align with and deviate from business processes in real-life business environments.
Why is this important? Two primary reasons.
1. Composite applications, or mash-ups, get that way as they get closer and closer to mirroring and supporting how real people do real work in real businesses – or at least would like to do their work.
2. Business processes drive how real people do real work in real businesses – and how those people do their work defines, or at least should define, how well those processes are working, and where they need refinement, replacement, or retirement.
For those who are trying to succeed with BPM, one of the most effective ways, in my opinion, at least, is to embed process-related and process-supporting features into every element of the IT infrastructure users touch. Those "BPM streams" can be collected, consolidated, and managed in ways that enable consistent deployment and improvement of key processes, without getting in the way of users. The tools to make this possible are still few and limited in scope, but better ones are coming. So now is the time to start thinking about the processes needed to maximize the value of those tools, and all of your BPM investments. (This is as true for vendors trying to sell BPM as it is for users trying to make it work, by the way.)
So do try to attend Paul's webinar, or at least to replay it from the archive if you can't make it live. Despite the omission of "BPM" from its title, I'm sure you'll benefit from it, whether through new ideas or validation of what you're already doing. And if you are doing anything with or about composite applications or mash-ups that's BPM-related, please let me know.
Michael Dortch has been an analyst, 'information entrepreneur,' speaker, and writer about IT and 'the real world" for the past 30 years. After almost 10 years at the Robert Frances Group (RFG), Michael begins a new position with Aberdeen Group in September.
Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.
