With all the publicity surrounding Google Chrome on September 2, I asked myself:
"What is Chrome's possible effect on business process management (BPM)?"
I began by reading the Google publicity. There may be some bells and whistles in the product or its write-up that I did not see in my quick read/download but basically in terms of the promised “experience,” I don’t get it. Search directly from the URL field rather than the search field that’s right beside it on Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)? What does that save a user? Tabs? Isn’t that the same as on IE (I don’t use them but I think they’re there)? Less/no pull down menus? Ditto for IE if you configure it that way. There’s a cute but not fundamentally more advantageous way of accessing favorites.
The big challenge for me in answering my own question without doing some research out in the field is that I have to think like someone that has not been using applications for 30 years, because the great unwashed is an increasingly important part of most “managed business processes.” Maybe a consumer thinks differently but the big issue for Google and Chrome is that I don’t even think of myself as using “a browser.” Because I am a researcher, my home page every morning is Google Advanced; the fact that it is on Firefox or IE is strictly a whim. I see my wife open MSN to do Hotmail (or read the headlines or the ads). I would guess she doesn’t think of herself as a browser user but as an email user. My grandkids open Pinball (how do they get to that on Chrome?) or MLB.com. In the latter case, they are going to a portal, not a browser.
The generation in between—the grandkids’ parents—do seem to do YouTube, Facebook, etc. and other browser-based applications on weekends when I can observe. Hopefully the thirty-somethings also do some constructive things during the week that pay the bills. Does Chrome (or IE or Firefox) support those constructive things in business, construction, education and healthcare delivery? If so, there’s a market here (for IE and Firebox as well as Chrome). But AutoCAD does not appear to be there yet. What about GE Healthcare’s IDX input screens?
Do browsers support in-house-developed education applications or in-house-developed code in general? I asked some IT directors about that and I did not find a lot of inside-the-firewall apps supported by browsers. In-house, they said, I could fill out a request for a vacation and change my withholding via Chrome if I were not self employed. My salespeople could track leads and customer complaints via a browser if I had any salespeople.
Not many B2B apps seem to be primarily browser based yet either—particularly in support of supply chain management and product lifecycle management involving extensive outsourcing. That surprised me because SAP and Microsoft (when it was Great Plains) introduced browser based features that are now called mashups 10 years ago. Oracle ERP actually jumped directly from a green screen to a very thin client if I recall so it should be pretty browser ready (but of course I am not going to put that big Oracle DB that runs the whole company out in the cloud). And of course a lot of B2C stuff is browser based.
So I guess Chrome is all about personal and personal productivity applications for now with minimal impact on BPM. Any ideas how you might use browsers more effectively in your BPM?
-- Dennis Byron
I was thinking more along the lines of being able to build process specific web applications.
There’s something deeper to learn about Google from this product than the initial reaction to the product features. The story is about the platform that Google is building that makes it cheaper and easier for them to develop and run web-scale applications than anyone else.
(Dennis Reply: Thanks for the comment. As I said over at Seeking Alpha -- http://seekingalpha.com/article/93711-google-s-chrome-sounds-like-1970s-pressure-cooker -- this is a theory that some--not Google that I can see--are promoting as a role for Chrome "beyond the browser." I don't see it but it makes for good speculation and debate.)
In mid-to large scale BPM implementations, I have found one of the most sensitive parts of the implementation is the client experience (which of course makes sense since there are 1000s of client machines compared to a couple of server machines). Directly related to the number of clients machines is the control over those client machines and the conformity of the client machines. IT administrators oversee not only client permissions but also which programs are company standards to be used on those client machines. Introducing new client applications or new versions of those applications (even for long-lived vendors like Microsoft) is often a planned project that can last for 12 months or more (once they do decide it is a direction the company wants to move in).
IT Administrators will definitely want to perform in depth evaluations of Google Chrome from an architecture perspective and a security perspective before rolling it out as a new company standard. After downloading and reviewing Google Chrome here, both from the personal use experience and also approaching it technically, I do not foresee the mass of enterprise-wide, critical day-to-day applications hitching their wagon to the Google Chrome horse. At least not today or tomorrow....but like everything that achieves viral popularity in the IT space, it might be inevitable.
Chris Adams
VP of Product Marketing and Management
Ultimus
Dennis
In response to your question "Any ideas how you might use browsers more effectively in your BPM?"
I work for PNMsoft (BPM software vendor) and our solution deployments are all 100% browser based with desktop and portal integration. This can also be browser based assuming you use Outlook Web Access and a web based portal UI.
We even go so far as to design our processes, forms and business rules in a web broweser and therefore have a zero desktop footprint.
Have a look at http://www.pnmsoft.com/sequence_bpm_workflow.aspx for more information.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
there are so many advantages and features with Chrome, such as it's speed, for example; now if only they would take care it's quirky cookie management...