Bruce Silver Associates The 2006 BPMS Report BPM and Content Management Advisors © Bruce Silver Associates 2005 www.brsilver.com 500 Bear Valley Road Aptos CA 95003 USA Contact: Bruce Silver, Principal [email protected] +1 831 685-8803 IBM WEBSPHERE BPM SUITE 1. Vendor and Product Overview IBM occupies a unique spot in the BPMS vendor landscape: It is the first (and, so far, only) infrastructure software supplier to offer a complete BPMS – supporting the end-to-end lifecycle from analytical modeling to performance management and optimization – based entirely on service-oriented architecture (SOA). IBM has a long history in the traditionally distinct markets for workflow, application integration, and performance management software, and is today leading the charge toward enterprise transformation through SOA. Previous generations of BPMS technology from IBM, sold under the WebSphere Business Integration brand, were based on a diverse collection of tools and engines, some J2EE-based and some not. IBM’s new BPM suite, based on WebSphere Business Modeler, Business Monitor, and Process Server version 6, brings all of these components together in a common service-oriented framework. The architecture provides a common orchestration engine, common data representation, common invocation model, and common design environment for all aspects of business integration solutions. Business process management is only one style of business integration supported IBM’s strategic SOA initiative. WebSphere Process Server and its associated design tools are aimed more broadly at SOA developers building composite applications on WebSphere. The BPM suite “wraps” those components in business-oriented modeling and monitoring tools that bring a BPM perspective to solution design and performance management. WebSphere BPM implementations emphasize mission-critical integration-intensive processes in banking and financial services, insurance, electronics manufacturing, retail, energy, and telecommunications. • A leading global financial institution was able to re-engineer trust services processes and integrate formerly non-integrated back end systems. As a result, account opening cycle time was reduced from six months to six weeks, netting an initial savings of $6 Million. Supported by automation and business rules, fee income increased tenfold. • A large mortgage lender was able to cut its labor-intensive post-closing process time by 53 percent while achieving a 34 percent increase in efficiency, resulting in $4 Million in annual savings. • A national telecommunications provider was able to integrate six different provisioning applications and automate the assignment of channels. Time for key provisioning steps decreased 15x – from 45 minutes to under 3 minutes – and developer productivity increased 50% from component reuse. The WebSphere BPM suite has four primary components: WebSphere Business Modeler v6 provides analytical modeling of process flow, resources, costs, data, and performance management; simulation of process scenarios; documentation; and export to process design tools. A new feature is the Business Measures Editor, which defines key performance indicators and other process metrics used in performance management.2006 BPMS Report IBM WebSphere BPM Suite © Bruce Silver Associates 2005 2 WebSphere Integration Developer v6 (WID) provides executable process modeling through service-oriented component assembly. Oriented to non-programmers, WID provides a simplified authoring environment supporting end-to-end design of all types of business integration solutions based on service components, including BPM solutions. As part of the BPM suite, WID imports BPEL and business objects from WebSphere Business Modeler and deploys executable models to the Process Server runtime environment. WebSphere Process Server v6 is the foundation of IBM’s service-oriented architecture. Layered on WebSphere Application Server, its SOA core services include Service Component Architecture, business objects, and the Common Event Infrastructure (CEI) used for process monitoring. In BPMS solutions, Process Server provides the BPEL orchestration engine, business rule engine, and component execution environment, as well as the WebSphere ESB and other integration middleware components. WebSphere Business Monitor v6 is the performance management runtime component. Monitor Server processes events emitted by executing service components and writes performance data to a DB2-based operational data store. Using metrics defined in Modeler, both real-time and historical analytics can be displayed in dashboard tables and charts, and event-triggered actions executed through Monitor’s Action Manager. WebSphere Business Monitor runs as portlets in IBM WebSphere Portal, which is included in the package. Surrounding these four primary BPMS components, aimed at business analysts and integration specialists, are additional modeling, design tools, and runtime services for enterprise architects, J2EE developers, and legacy system specialists, which may be needed to build reusable services and complete BPMS solutions. Figure 1 shows how the WebSphere BPM suite components correspond to elements of the BPMS component structure described in Chapter 1 of the 2006 BPMS Report. Rational AppDeveloperRational Software ArchitectProcess ServerWIDBusiness MonitorBusiness ModelerAnalytical Process Model-Flowchart- Resource model- Simulation- AnalysisSkeletonExecutable Process Model-Flow- Process data- Skeleton integrationProcessEngineBizProcessDataITPerformanceManagement-Analytics- Dashboards-Events- MetricsIntegrationFrameworkERPCRMEJBLegacyContinuousProcessImprovementBusiness SystemsCompleteExecutable Process Model- Detailed integration- Data transformations- Exception handling- UI designCode reusablecomponentsEA Modeling- Data model- ComponentsEvents Figure 1. Mapping of WebSphere BPM suite components to the BPMS process lifecycle. Unlike most BPMS vendors, IBM owns all of its suite components and has combined them in a unified design and execution environment. In fact, the WebSphere BPM suite is the result of a significant reworking of technology either acquired (e.g., Holosofx, Crossworlds, Rational, PureEdge) or developed in its own labs to place them all on a consistent service-oriented2006 BPMS Report IBM WebSphere BPM Suite © Bruce Silver Associates 2005 3 architecture