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Event Processing Technical Society: Glossary Version 2 for Public Review

One of the projects of the Event Processing Technical Society (EPTS) is the publication of an Event Processing Glossary.  The second version of this glossary was just posted for public review at David Luckham’s Complex Event Processing site.  From the document:

The purpose of the EPTS glossary of terms is to facilitate industry use of event processing technology by providing a common language for developing applications and software infrastructure that use event processing concepts.

The event processing glossary has three goals:

• Accelerate the learning of the event processing concept
• Further community communication by enabling practitioners to utilize common concepts and terms
• Provide a foundation for analysis and the development of best practices, publications, and industry standards

As a participant in the working group calls, I must commend Professor Luckham and Roy Schulte for their squirrel herding ability. 

Review the document (pdf).  Participate in the EPTS.

BPM and SOA: Connected for Business Optimization

Ok, I admit, the only person who thought I wouldn’t be continuing, in some capacity, with the merged BPM / SOA Consortium was me.  Apparently, I was wrong.  In addition to writing and advocacy for OMG’s Business Ecology Initiative, I have a new consulting relationship with the practice area communities, including the BPM / SOA-C, and two more to be announced.  [Here’s a hint on one.  As if I could say no!]

Anyway, moving on topic.  Since January, the BPM and SOA Consortiums have been working together to formalize the merged consortium’s mission, goals and objectives, identify some early projects, plan the March Symposium, and combine web properties. 

The results of that work, cross-posted from the newly combined (and spiffed up) BPM / SOA Consortium Insights, follow.

Who is the BPM / SOA Consortium? 

The BPM / SOA Consortium is an advocacy group comprised of practitioners, service providers and technology vendors dedicated to promoting the business value, and enabling the successful adoption, of Business Process Management (BPM) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) by the Global 1000, major government agencies and midmarket businesses.

The BPM / SOA Consortium is a practice area community under the Business Ecology^TM Initiative (BEI).  BEI provides education, advocacy and member programs to enable organizations to achieve Business Ecology success, employ Actionable Architecture^TM, and carve a path to business-IT integration.

Business Ecology is a business-technology imperative focused on streamlining business processes, removing waste from technology portfolios, and adjusting resource consumption, to optimize business operations and foster business innovation.

The BPM / SOA Consortium is a newly expanded community, connecting the members and sponsors of the SOA and BPM Consortiums, to focus on business optimization.

Why did the BPM & SOA Consortiums merge?

The 2010 merger of the SOA and BPM Consortiums is based on the following premises:

• When the SOA Consortium began, Service Oriented Architecture was more of a fringe methodology that only a few organizations were doing with any great success, rather than an accepted part of an overall business strategy. Three years later, corporations large and small use the principles of SOA to enhance their overall business and technology strategies.
• A well-implemented Service Oriented Architecture leads to streamlined technology portfolios, improved resource sharing, better defined business capabilities, and ease of capability introduction or change.
• A well-implemented Business Process Management initiative leads to greater business agility, faster productivity and improved customer interactions for all stakeholders.
• The combined use of Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management results in an optimized business environment that is change-friendly, and poised for business innovation.
• Business and information technology professionals must collaborate to realize the highest yielding benefits of Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture.
• Enterprise and government practitioners would benefit greatly from a vibrant practitioner community to exchange insights on use cases, challenges and techniques, related to Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management, used individually, or combined.
• Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture, individually and combined, enable Business Ecology.

And now, the go forward organization.

BPM / SOA Consortium Mission

Promote the value and adoption of Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture as a means for organizations to optimize business operations, increase agility and streamline portfolios.

BPM / SOA Consortium Goals

The BPM / SOA Consortium is working to achieve the following goals by 2013, that:

• 75% of the Global 1000 and 50% of mid-sized businesses combine Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture to optimize business operations, streamline portfolios, and create a change-friendly business-technology environment.
• 75% of Major Government Agencies combine Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture to optimize mission operations, streamline portfolios, and create a change-friendly business-technology environment.

BPM / SOA Consortium Objectives:

• Shift the conversation from competing strategies to combined business value (business optimization)
• Provide education on business analysis, process design, governance, performance measurement and implementation techniques to combine Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management for business optimization
• Showcase Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture success stories, benefit realization, best practices and lessons learned
• Raise the Business IQ of information technology professionals and Tech-Savvy of business professionals to realize the greatest business value from Business Process Management, Service Oriented Architecture and business-technology
• Create a vibrant practitioner community for the exchange of insights on use cases, challenges and techniques, which will assist in value attainment, and spur broader, industry-wide Service Oriented Architecture and Business Process Management adoption.

Visit our website to learn about BPM / SOA Consortium membership and sponsorship.  Check out the agenda for our upcoming public symposium in Jacksonville Florida.

 

[Disclosure: OMG, via its Business Ecology Initiative and practice area consortia, is a client of my firm, Elemental Links]

Forrester: Don’t be an IT-hater, be a Business-IT Integrator

I’m cross-posting my latest from the new Business Ecology Initiative blog.  As you know, “Business-IT Integration” is one of my soapbox items. 

In a recent post on the Forrester Blog for CIOs, Sharyn Leaver writes an inspired response to Susan Cramm’s 8 Things We Hate About IT.  As outlined in CIO Insight, Cramm’s “8 Things” focus on the following business-IT relationship issues:

1. Service or Control?
2. Results or Relationships?
3. Tactics or Strategies?
4. Expense or Investment?
5. Quickness or Quality?
6. Customization or Standardization?
7. Innovation or Bureaucracy?
8. Greatness of Goodness?

In her post, Leaver refers to the above as ““8 Beaten-to-Death Clichés” about IT-business relationships”.  However, her point isn’t directed at Cramm, but rather the situation that business and IT executives and professionals continue to inhabit.  As a way out, Leaver offers some good observations and actionable advice.  Her first two points relate to organizational design:

• “Tension between IT and line businesses is designed into organizational structures. Hard-wiring organizational lines into centralized IT “shops” assigned to business units or combinations puts IT unwittingly into a self-perceived servant relationship with business units. No doubt in recent economic downturn years, increasing centralization of IT has resulted in a cementing of “us” versus “them” — where as federated and decentralized structures preserve some of “us” within “them” and align attitudes and goals accordingly. HR, Accounting, Facilities, and other centralized services all struggle with balancing acts of meeting the needs of those they service.
•  Preserving a request-fulfill relationship institutionalizes disappointment all around. Missed expectations and unhappiness result from a “take a number” approach to queuing up service requests, ranking them according to some criteria, estimating fulfillment time, and attempting to deliver in the face of numerous “Look over there!” distractions. Again, breaking up some of the IT resources into the business units for dedicated and local work would help. CIOs should read and absorb Forrester’s BT model for operating IT.”

From a Business Ecology perspective, we refer to these design shifts as Business-IT Integration:

“Business-IT Integration is the organizational model for business and information technology convergence.  This model promotes collaborative strategy, planning, architecture and execution; shared decision-making, business-tech savvy personnel and service delivery at the point of value generation.”

Similar to Leaver, we are not saying immediately or completely decentralize IT, nor are we calling for an end to enterprise-level strategies and resources, but rather, that a new model is required.  A model that supports near-term needs as well as business vitality over time, balancing current conditions, optimization and innovation focus areas, resource allocations, and longer-term business motivations, capabilities and outcomes.

As Leaver points out, the time of lamenting needs to end, it is time to take action. 

To gather other actionable ideas, I plan to read Cramm’s book.  A related read I highly recommend is Weill and Ross’ IT Saavy.  For the all important peer interaction regarding Business-IT Integration, consider joining us in Jacksonville FL, March 23-24. 

If you can’t join us in March, but have some ideas, success stories, or warnings you would like to share, please leave a comment, or drop an email.

 

[Disclosure: The Business Ecology Initiative is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]

100-day Cloud Watch Update: Surveying the Cloud Computing Surveys for Adoption Trends

As I mentioned on the 12th, I’m dedicating 100-days worth of research sessions to explore “enterprise cloud computing considerations”.  My first topic is adoption trends:

• What are organizations doing, or planning to do, with cloud computing?
• What types of cloud computing environments are being used, considered and/or ignored?
• What industries are leading and lagging adoption?
• What use cases are being fulfilled, in part or in full, by cloud computing offerings?
• What are the major drivers and expectations?

I’m starting by surveying the cloud computing surveys.  Certainly, I expect to see security noted as a big concern, and operating expense versus capital outlay as a driver.  In fact, I’ll cover each of those points in later days, as business risk and economic considerations, respectively.   What I’m looking for in my survey of the surveys are observations, trends and even predictions, beyond the headlines.

The first (wildly time-consuming) thing I did was narrow down the body of work by date, source and depth of available information.  My curated list of surveys/papers:

• MWD Advisors: Success with Cloud Computing: a survey of IT architects 2H09 [related video]
• Forrester: EAs are Seeing the Beginnings of Cloud’s Impact on IT
• Google Communications Intelligence Report, October 2009
• Rackspace: No More Servers, November 2009
• BTGS Enterprise Intelligence Research Report, November 2009
• F5 Networks Cloud Computing Survey, June- July 2009 [pdf link]
• Kelton Research for Avanade: Early 2009 [pdf link] and October 2009, related analysis from Joe McKendrick
• CIO Magazine, June 2009: article and report download
• IBM Global CIO Study, 2009
• Economist Cloud Computing Debate, Nov 2009 [pdf link]
• ReliaCloud SMB Cloud Computing Survey, June-July 2009: press release, survey results registration

Next, I began working through the list.  Given my background and primary readership, I started with the enterprise architecture focused research.  My observations to date:

• MWD Advisors Survey: Cloud Computing is Fundamentally about Service Delivery & Consumption
• Forrester to Enterprise Architects: Use Cloud Phenomenon to Boost Role as Business Advisor

As well, I posted a few other Cloud Watch items:

• James Urquhart: Understanding Infrastructure 2.0
• City Government in the Clouds: Orlando confidently switches to Google e-mail
• reddit on Amazon EC2: Users and page views grow, cost shrinks

This week, I’ll continue working the above list.  If a finding in any of the above strikes you as important, surprising, or ridiculous, please share. 

Speaking of ridiculous, did you see the over zealous reaction to Gartner’s recent 2012 prediction?  First, the prediction:

“By 2012, 20 percent of businesses will own no IT assets. Several interrelated trends are driving the movement toward decreased IT hardware assets, such as virtualization, cloud-enabled services, and employees running personal desktops and notebook systems on corporate networks.  The need for computing hardware, either in a data center or on an employee's desk, will not go away. However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry. For example, enterprise IT budgets will either be shrunk or reallocated to more-strategic projects; enterprise IT staff will either be reduced or reskilled to meet new requirements, and/or hardware distribution will have to change radically to meet the requirements of the new IT hardware buying points.”

For days afterwards, Twitter and the Industry Press were full of “Gartner says: 20% of businesses will be fully in the cloud by 2012”.  Of course, when you read past the first sentence, you’ll see Gartner is really calling out different ownership models: “However, if the ownership of hardware shifts to third parties, then there will be major shifts throughout every facet of the IT hardware industry.” 

I’m not disagreeing with Gartner’s prediction or the critical point on how a re-allocation of funding can support optimization and innovation.  What I am saying is beware the hype.  Read past the headlines.  As Gene Leganza points out: “[to be a trusted business advisor] architects must have a thorough understanding of the facts, subtleties, hype, and misinformation surrounding cloud computing…”

 

 

Follow the 100-day Cloud Watch on Twitter.

Business Ecology: Optimization for Innovation

As I mentioned in my 2010 plans, one of my projects this year is writing and advocacy for the OMG’s Business Ecology Initiative (BEI).  This morning, we launched the new Business Ecology Initiative blog, and I published the following overview post on Business Ecology, the Business Ecology Initiative and Business Ecology enablers. 

As you read the post, you’ll notice several themes common to my on-going writings (soapboxes), which is why getting involved with the BEI is a no-brainer for me.  The original post follows.

What is Business Ecology?

Business Ecology is a business-technology imperative focused on streamlining business processes, removing waste from technology portfolios, and adjusting resource consumption, to optimize business operations and foster business innovation.

As the world economy emerges from a painful recession, organizations are confronted with the challenge of retaining bottom-line diligence, while pursuing market sustaining and gaining innovation. 

For many organizations, the answer lies in harvesting savings and trapped value from existing processes, resources and capabilities.  To accomplish this, organizations are turning to Business Ecology. 

Business Ecology is not a one-time fix, but rather a management philosophy concerned with business vitality over time, balancing current conditions, optimization and innovation focus areas, resource allocations, and longer-term business motivations, capabilities and outcomes.

An important enabler of Business Ecology is the use of technology beyond automation. Business Ecology practitioners employ technology to identify, measure, model and drive business change. 

Business Ecology adoption and execution requires a cross functional team, comprised of business and information technology professionals. Key team capabilities include business process thinking, business performance measurement and analysis, financial analysis, IT architecture, portfolio management, service delivery and iterative project management.

Successful Business Ecology initiatives adopt the principles and values of Business Technology.  The team communicates with each other, sponsors and constituents in a common, business based language.  Measurement is defined and reported in business terms.  Funding and governance decisions and mechanisms reflect a shared resource, investment portfolio approach.

As Business Ecology teams progress, technology and business savvy is exchanged, fostering a greater understanding of each other’s challenges, skills and tools, which leads to a break in the longstanding, constraining, business and IT divide.  A byproduct of successful Business Ecology is business-IT integration.

The Chief Information Officer (CIO), given his/her unique position to view business processes, resource consumption, and technology portfolios across the organization, most often champions Business Ecology adoption and execution.  C-level executives, including the CEO, CFO and COO, sponsor Business Ecology initiatives.

What is the Business Ecology Initiative?

OMG, via the Business Ecology Initiative, leads the drive towards Business Ecology. 

The Business Ecology Initiative provides education, advocacy and member programs to enable organizations to achieve Business Ecology success, employ Actionable Architecture^TM, and carve a path to business-IT integration.

Actionable Architecture^TM brings transparent business methodology to the definition and delivery of common IT infrastructure, platforms and services.  Emphasized business attributes include quality, efficiency, compliance, agility, value, effectiveness, ease of use, sustainability and business goal traceability.

Business-IT Integration is the organizational model for business and information technology convergence.  This model promotes collaborative strategy, planning, architecture and execution; shared decision-making, business-tech savvy personnel and service delivery at the point of value generation.   

What enables Business Ecology?

Techniques: LEAN, Six Sigma, BPM, Value Chain Analysis, Actionable Architecture^TM , Business Technology, Agile, Modeling, Simulation, Business Measurement, and Sustainability Analysis

Technology: SOA, BPM, Cloud Computing, Event Processing, Analytics, Master Data Management (MDM), and Open Standards

Measurement Models: Business Process Maturity Model (BPMM), Sustainability Assessment Model (SAM)

People: C-level executives, business and information technology professionals, who embrace the philosophy of Business Ecology

 

[Disclosure: The Business Ecology Initiative is a client of my firm, Elemental Links.]