A Roadmap for Web Services-driven BPM - Learning through example

Dec. 1, 2003 12:00 AM

In previous issues of Web Services Journal (Vol. 3, issues 7 and 10) we discussed how Web services-driven BPM presents an opportunity for new types of business solutions and explored the challenges to Web services business process management (BPM). This month, we provide a roadmap for success.

For optimal results, a roadmap should take into account not only the available technology, but also the prevailing industry standards and the internal characteristics of a company. Organizations must carefully weigh risk and reward, and align their processes to address each of the major Web services-BPM challenges. They must address technical challenges, such as lack of security controls at the protocol level and lack of transaction management capabilities, by leveraging available enterprise architecture technology and maturing WS standards. In our experience, service portfolio challenges, such as unstructured proliferation of services and lack of architectural layering, are effectively addressed through a cross-functional team referred to as a Center of Excellence (COE). The COE manages policy decisions, makes them operational and translates them into business solutions.

Following are two examples that illustrate how a good roadmap and COE can deliver concrete BPM-Web services solutions that successfully weave business processes.

Example One: Real-Time CRM
Web services-driven BPM enables longspanning interactions that start and end with a customer. To deliver a realtime system for CRM and prevent it from becoming a functional silo, we recommend the following roadmap:

Use the roadmap to create a process model that maintains transactional integrity by selecting products and standards to ensure that the system is transaction- driven.

Roadmap your CRM architecture (i.e., the interfaces with existing systems) in the same way you merge multiple support organizations into one integrated team with standardized processes.

Build business layers that break monolithic CRM applications into services clusters, externalizing components as dictated by the business process. Examples include:
- An external Product Repository
- An independent and scalable multi-channel order processor

Build two common integration layers to "sandwich" the business functionality, isolating it from the core CRM application and from legacy systems and making it compatible with the other business processes in the enterprise.

Apply the high-quality, incremental, process-based development model dictated by the COE to adhere to the business process evolution.

Finally, since BPM facilitates the creation of a "true" real-time system by quickly and cost effectively dealing with business exceptions
- Build a centralized subsystem to collect errors, where all systems can interface using Web services or more appropriate delivery mechanisms
- Build automatic proceed/retry/abort mechanisms for controlled, predictable resolution capabilities while also providing error resolution tools to minimize the cost and maximize the reliability of human intervention

Example Two: Legacy Systems Application Transformation
Businesses today need to generate additional shareholder value while reducing investments in technology. This is particularly difficult for organizations experiencing competitive or regulatory pressures and that have their IT assets "locked-up" in costly, inflexible, and complex legacy applications. BPM and Web services enable companies to gain a competitive advantage by transforming millions of lines of outdated COBOL code into a flexible, service-oriented architecture (SOA). The recommended roadmap for companies in this position has three main steps:

Avoid service portfolio pitfalls by reverseengineering and documenting existing IT assets, including program hierarchy, job flow, data model, business rules, and context. Subject matter experts and application designers should then use this information to describe the capabilities of the target SOA in terms of discrete units of functionality (i.e., services.)

Catalog the identified services by tier based on their purpose (for example client, presentation, business logic, integration, or resource.) If the target SOA addresses new functionality or constraints, identify and add the additional services to the catalog. Because the solution will operate within the boundaries of the enterprise architecture, technical challenges will be overcome by leveraging existing components.

Define a value-based roadmap for deploying Web services within the SOA. For example, some services may remain within the boundaries of the legacy systems, wrapped with a Web service interface; others may be decommissioned legacy components rewritten in J2EE or .NET. In most cases, client- and presentation-tier services are migrated first, resource-tier services last.

These services become resources to BPM for creating, managing, and monitoring processes. Web services give BPM the potential to create nimble processes and applications by capturing events from a variety of sources and presenting them with a consistent interface.

Building BPM solutions that leverage Web services requires neither luck nor a stroke of genius, but rather is the result of methodical approaches. The opportunity is certainly there, and by creating a solid roadmap that identifies and overcomes the challenges, companies can reap the reward.

Published Dec. 1, 2003— Reads 12,727 — Feedback 1
Copyright © 2003 SYS-CON Media, Inc. — All Rights Reserved.
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About Alejandro Danylyszyn
Alejandro Danylyszyn is a senior manager in Deloitte Consulting's Technology Integration practice. He has worked for over 15 years as a consultant to large high-technology manufacturing, telecommunication carriers, and financial services companies in the areas of strategy, operations/process improvement and solution design/implementation, with a focus in systems integration, enterprise portals and web services.

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