Moving BI Into The Cloud Part 2

[Steve Bennett]

Here's another cloud angle to contemplate: IBM is now to offer BPM BlueWorks as a cloud-based BPM service for free (but there is a catch). Check it out.

Using it, you can model strategies and metrics and then produce capability maps (based on IBM's Component Business Modeling methodology) and process maps (which can be expanded into detailed BPMN models. Your models and other artifacts are managed online with Rational Asset Manager. All of your activities are managed and stored within your private area of BlueWorks and hosted online in ibm.com.

So BlueWorks gives you a repository-based business modeling environment in a team collaboration space. It goes a couple of steps further by adding in industry-specific content that you can use as cookie cutters to rapidly build your models. If you use  Lotus Connect, you can also involve people outside of your BlueWorks team to participate in the effort.

With these BPMN (Business Process Model Notation) models, you can export a model into WebSphere Business Modeler - either on your desktop or remaining in the cloud using the SOA Sandbox.

The result is that you can collaboratively model business processes and get them into WebSpere to see how they work in a development testbed. All of that is free.

The catch - and it's not unreasonable - is that you have made an investment in the IBM toolset that should lead you to purchasing additional IBM modeling, database and web services. I'm not sure about how you would actually do it, but there should be ways to use the exported BPMN model out of BlueWorks and import it into any other BPMN conversant tool.

I am aware that there are also a number of BPMN to BPEL (Business Process Execution Language) tools so sticking to open standards should be possible. Here's an old (2005) conference paper on the subject (Download Integration of BPEL2).

I have used Rational, DB2, and WebSphere myself and they are very viable BI tools. Add in Cognos as the new boy at IBM and you have one of the few end-to-end enterprise BI platforms around. Oracle, SAP and Microsoft being the others.

As IBM states, their goal is to allow BlueWorks users to:

• http://www.ibm.com/i/v16/bullets/sprites.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 6px 0.15em; ">Capture and collaborate on BPM Business Designs in the cloud including strategy maps, capability maps, and process maps - starting from scratch, leveraging prebuilt templates, or leveraging contributions from the community


• http://www.ibm.com/i/v16/bullets/sprites.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 6px 0.15em; ">Discover and contribute industry-specific BPM content that covers a full spectrum of BPM strategies, trends, capabilities, and best practices for making the smartest business decisions around BPM


• http://www.ibm.com/i/v16/bullets/sprites.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: initial; -webkit-background-clip: initial; -webkit-background-origin: initial; background-color: initial; background-position: 6px 0.15em; ">Participate in the community by blogging, creating local Meetups, and chatting with BPM experts


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• It's not live yet, but should be by the end of June. 


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