Digital Transformation powered by BPM

Being a BPM practitioner for over a decade and half,  to me Digital transformation is all about delivering the orchestration of people, systems and devices at a level that could not be achieved by traditional means.

iBPMS (intelligent business process management suites) provides a competitive edge in the race towards digital transformation as it lets you re-engineer processes in days rather than years. It provides ways to re-model business processes, imagining new and better ways of performing operations. Starting 2016, some of the leading BPM suites have broken the barrier of structured work processes by handling more complex, unstructured knowledge-led work requiring deep case visibility.

The result of which is the energy companies in Washington area have started developing the prototypes that involves complex IoT operations. They are planning to automate and regulate the energy consumption and repair by using sensors to send signals to BPM via IoT protocols. Thereby freeing up their ground crew to carry out the costly maintenance and saving them the trip to the problematic energy household meters.

In summary, BPM is powering the digital transformation for companies today for two key reasons:

1. It provides flexibility by wrap around legacy IT environments to deliver digital agility on top of rigid systems.
2. It has broken the barrier of structured work processes there by enabling the businesses to receive, inject and manage huge amount of data, various types of data at a speed higher than ever before.

How in your experience is BPM helping meet digital business goals? Let me know by leaving a comment!.

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Cloud Computing Partner Classification-What type are you?

IBM enhanced its IBM WebSphere business integration software portfolio in early May 2010 after acquiring announced Cast Iron Systems.  In Q3 2010, IBM reiterated its commitment towards its global ecosystems of business partners by launching first of its kind cloud computing lab in Hursley, United Kingdom.  IBM partners can access IBM's cloud technologies to develop and test new cloud services from IBM's network of 38 Innovation Centers worldwide.

Guess what? IBM has also classified its Cloud partners into six different categories based on partner needs (yes you heard it right, no more public & private cloud creator classification!)

Cloud Builders – Are partners viz systems integrators, hardware integrators and software integrators who build typically private clouds for their enterprise customers.

Cloud Infrastructure Providers – Are partners who own a data center or have some IT operations skills and want to build a public cloud. The list includes Value-added distributors, Value-added resellers, IT services companies, large Telcos and/or hosting providers,.

Cloud Application Providers – Are partners who develop business applications and delivers them as service via a cloud. This category primarily includes solution providers who develop applications.

Cloud Services Re-sellers – Are primarily the re-sellers of the services from public cloud providers viz SI, hardware or software re-sellers.

Cloud Technology Providers – Are partners who have the ability to extend the capabilities of other company’s cloud for example companies that provide automated tools to chargeback customers hosted in cloud.

Cloud Aggregators – Are partners who aggregate services from multiple clouds for their customers.

Here is what Dave Mitchell, Director of Strategy and Emerging Business at IBM has to say:

[youtube width="560" height="340"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5xEsnoHTyg&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

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From behind the (fire)wall to the cloud

Being in an IT services company, I envy product vendor’s sales reps job. Whenever they bring any new product to their customers, the promises they make are just too big to believe and the jargons they use are just too confusing to the customers (like the subject of this discussion). One of my clients who made 6 digit investments in buying all the hardware, security suites and BPM packages to implement one-off BPM programs using SOA principles was given the sales pitch that public cloud computing is the way forward for BPM.

Imagine the state of the client who has not even seen the break-even for her investment is given one hour session on new technology buzzword cloud computing. As soon as she was released by these sales reps, she was aghast and came by my desk …. Is public cloud computing going to replace traditional enterprise IT?

Donning my IT consultant hat, I said I don’t think so. Public cloud computing won’t replace traditional enterprise IT however few years down the line service IT providers may sell business services using the new technology of virtualization. But rest assured your recent investment in BPM tools and hardware will not go waste. You will still need privately hosted hardware, customized services for your key business processes whose security, privacy, performance and availability cannot be compromised.

As this virtualization technology matures and organizations gear for adopting BPM enterprise wide, they may see cost advantage in moving certain BPMS components to public clouds like

• business process modeling and analysis tools, repositories
• collaboration and social networking tools
• test and demo environments
• monitoring and optimization components

But at any point of time, it is not practically possible to move all IT business processes hosted behind the fire(wall) to the cloud.

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