SOA-n-BPM For Small-to-Medium Businesses

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BIT ... by BIT ... Our Planet Is Getting Smarter ...

Changes such as:
--- less expensive energy bill,
--- a package delivered in two days instead of seven,
---  quarterly school reports available online;
are all indicative of smarter business processes!

Rich Hume ... General Manager, IBM
"This past month marked the one year anniversary of the launch of Smarter Planet. At the time, it was viewed as somewhat of a bold move, but it is a move that has yielded exceptional results for both IBM and its partners. Smarter planet has enabled IBM Business Partners to engage clients of all sizes in higher-value discussions. It's a platform where the value of IT can be delivered to help lead the new world that continues to take shape.The breadth and depth of IBM's portfolio is one of its greatest strengths - and one of the chief reasons to team with IBM. As systems continue to become smarter, new possibilities for progress unfold – which means additional opportunities for you, as an IBM Business Partner."

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Instrumented - InterConnected - Intelligent ...

CHANGE, on a regular basis, has become the order of the day!

From food-n-water, energy-n-transportation, governments (local-state-central), the world has become highly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent.

But, rapid and unpredictable change has made it challenging, to say the least!
- swings in markets;
- global competition;
- customer expectations;

Businesses, in effect people, seem to be working harder
... BUT, to get ahead of the pack, one must work smarter!


Working smart implies taking advantage of change ... this can happen by creating business-environments that are agile, collaborative and connected!

The Internet and the recent technologies associated with it, have brought in a slew of options that cut costs, improve communication-n-collaboration, and have made organizations agile and responsive to customer and/or associates needs.

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Change Is Good!

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Cloud Computing ... Is It Just Another Buzz Word???

 Cloud Computing is a new type of IT platform that seems to be narrowing the competitive edge between large corporations and the small shops!

More info ...

Dscf Who Am I

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Who Am I

View more presentations from Dominic Fernandez.

In 5 to 10 years most software will be free … Greg Stein, Chairman of the Apache Group and Google Engineer

The 'stack' in the Open-Source environment, for products and services just keeps on growing!

As this continues ... there will be less money to be made from "packaged stuff"

Greg Stein, Chairman of Apache Group and Google engineer, said: "All of your software [will be] free".

This would 'translate' to: paying 'someone' for 'assistance' that can derive benefits from the 'free stuff'. This is predicted to happen in the next five to ten years.

Even today, 'free' (someone is paying) software projects have overtaken commercial efforts, when it comes to functionality! WHY? Simple, there are many more developers in the open-source community!

Providing 'Assistance-services' for functions such as installation, configuration, maintenance, upgrading, testing and customization, is where the 'bread-n-butter' will be found!

Stein further said, "As our systems grow more and more complex, more and more assistance is
necessary."

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SOA for U-n-Me ..... dummies!

SOA, that is, Service-oriented Architecture, is  a PLAN that people (architects) use to re-design Systems (IT especially) and organizations.

In involves the adoption of the PLAN by each individual involved in the process - if it is not fully accepted or properly implementing, it could result in shattered SOA-dreams!

BUT, if done properly, can transfrom a business into being a leader in it's space!

Key ideas that could help, on this path:

Measure progress and make course corrections as you go;

Motivate participants that are involved in the SOA-adoption process;

Mechanize, that is, automate processes, on an on-going basis;

Although SOA is an architectural method to create a PLAN, there is one basic principle: Start small - one project at a time! Until this becomes part of the organization culture / fabric!

Implementing SOA, implies that everything should "look" as a Service!

A Service is a basic building-block, that quite often is a repeatable business process/ capability.

An SOA service is a capability that is consumed, for example:

- Credit-check for individuals that are applying for a Loan / Credit

--- or maybe

- Changing the address of a Supplier/Customer/Employee

A Service is "invoked", and it presents a well-defined method that allows a person to access it's capability.

"Services" are located remotely, that is, they can be "invoked" from "anywhere". They are semi-transparent because one does not know how it does it's job.

"Services" can be meshed together thereby providing another Service. AND, if assembled in a particular sequence, they can complete a "process".

... more to come.....

Plan for Disaster - NOW!

When disaster strikes, it impacts loss of data OR no access to data, applications and/or facilities.

Hurricanes and other calamaties, have impacted all types of businesses: retail, hotels, corporations.

Those that had a contingency PLAN, recovered much faster than those that did not.

Disasters impact loss of data and communications infrastructure resulting in improper or non-functional businesses.

Regular backup at specified schedules, either file-based or continuous, with at least one COPY off-site, ensures that a business can bring up applications and data, when DISASTER strikes.

This preparedness should involve people being trained in the processes and plans that constitute disaster recovery.

Some ideas to consider:

• Identify the data and systems that are critical for the Business' continuity - integrate data and applications backup into recovery solutions that can be remotely accessed.
  
• Identify and rectify failures in the network, business process, and people
  --- redundancy helps eliminate single points of failure. Identify redundant switches, routers, etc.
  --- review business processes and individual responsibilities - plan for 'failover' plans.

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Am I an Entrepreneur????

QUESTIONS??? that I subjected myself to!

1.Your Name: Dominic Fernandez

2.Name of Your Business venture: Computants Inc --- http://www.computants.org/ 

3.Address Of Your Business: Ontario, Canada --- Mumbai, India

4.Date Of interview: April 16, 2009

5.What Product or sevice do you sell? Process Integration, ERP, CRM as SaaS

6.How long have you been in this business? 20+ years.

7.Why did you start this venture?

--- Time for Money, love to be paid for what is decided upon - projected-oriented.

8.Why did you think that there would be an oppurtunity for you to develop this type of business

--- getting IT done since 1984 --- never looked back!

 

9.Please relate three of the main obstacles that you had to overcome before you got started.

--- 'color', non-acceptance, and the list goes on.....

10.Would You call yourself an entrepreneur? To the CORE!

11.What do you enjoy most about your business? getting IT done ---- providing solutions that satisfy!

12.What is the most difficult aspect of your business? Marketing, expanding --- more revenue.

13.Whats the best thing about your business? People-n-Technology

14.Whats the worst thing? "dry days" ---- not enough work!

15.What kinds of skills do you use most in your business?

--- Listening, questioning, understanding, suggesting

16.Which of these skills did you have to learn since starting this business?

--- All, it's an ongoing process

17.What advice would you give to a person who would like to become an entrepreneur?

--- It's not for the faint-hearted, "... when the going gets tough, the TOUGH get going!"

Modeling Business Processes...

For those businesses that want to stay ahead of the competition, defining and modeling business processes is a critical in improving business performance.

A business process is a variable pattern of interactions that occur between an organization's components and its environment as the organization pursues its business objectives.

These processes often start off as simple models and get more complex as changes are made due to ever-changing circumstances.

Businesses that do not have a formal process for documentation and management of their business-process models can be stuck with problems and bottlenecks.

Business processes that have been modeled well, helps locate and eliminate inefficiencies, undue costs, and .......

A model is a visual representation of a process that contains supporting information - they should have a well thought-out structure, and ensure consistent and complete representation of information.

Business process models help:

• Document existing procedures
• Determine requirements for staff, systems, and facilities
• Plan changes to existing processes and systems
• Test and analyze existing and proposed processes

Also, this data can be used to support other business applications, e.g., data from one model can be used to automate or develop another downstream applications.

SOA - What does it mean to those in Operations???

SOA represents a set of agreements among service requesters and service providers that specify what one can / should expect [QoS - quality of service, business & IT metrics].

By Definition

Services agreements are between entities, namely services providers and consumers. These

agreements are based on services specification and not implementation.

Focus is to ensure that the service specification is separate from the implementation, and, each service addresses some / many business requirement(s).

The question to be asked is, "How does one  define and enforce service-level agreements so that service functionality can be predictably and contractually delivered to specific service requesters?”

SOA - What does it mean to Implementation Specialist???

From an implementation standpoint, SOA represents a programming model complete with standards, tools, methods, and technologies - such as web services.

By Definition

SOA is synonmous with an architecture that makes use of web service technologies such as SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI. (for Implementators, SOA is a product that conforms to the the World Wide Web Consortium Web services architecture).

SOA - What does it mean to Business Architects???

SOA is an architectural style wherein a service-provider, service-requester and a service-description are involved. It enables the consumer (requester) to discover/find a provider - given the context of the service that is sought. It's characteristics are:

--- loose coupling, reuse and simple and composite implementations.

By Definition:

A system architecture in which application functions are built as components (services) that are

loosely coupled and well-defined to support interoperability and to improve flexibility and reuse.

SOA - What does it mean to Business Managers?!?

Dependant on a person's role within an organization, Service-oriented Architecture (SOA), is viewed differently. Each of these perspectives may not provide a complete 'picture'.

For business managers, SOA are the capabilities that the business wants to expose as a set of services to clients and business partners, that is, a set of services is made up of the business services provided by the company within the framework of the industry they are in.

By Definition:

SOA is the method to identify  business processes as secure, standardized components / services

that can be reused and combined to address changing business priorities.

Business Process Management - why, what, how???

Business Process Management enables businesses to continuously optimize their business processes and adapt them to rapidly changing needs.

 

Business leaders expect their organization’s processes to keep up with their changing business conditions. And in today’s competitive marketplace, implementing changes must be done rapidly while demonstrating value, at a lower cost.

 

Harness the full potential of your business processes and drive organizational commitment to process optimization goals and business objectives. BPM enables you to model, simulate, deploy, rapidly change and monitor business processes to:

·          Continuously optimize operational capabilities and improve business performance

·          Provide a real-time operational view with the ability to intervene fast

·          Enable business and IT users to rapidly drive process change and innovation

·          Faster delivery of new and differentiated products and services

·          Role-based capabilities to align process stakeholders to performance objectives

 

BPM suites includes a comprehensive set of software, services and industry expertise to support the common BPM adoption patterns and many different ways in which business process management is incorporated within organizations today:

Get Smarter Business Results...

CEOs want to SEE change - it is the only CONSTANT! Yet, the gap between those have done so and those that haven't is increasing every year!

To ACHIEVE SMARTER RESULTS, one must have agility in their operations. Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) enables this - cut cost, improve customer satisfication.

Achieve Process Integration of legacy assets with newer deployments, within the organization and partners. Enable your organization to be nimble and flexible through the implementation of SOA.

More info: Computants Inc