SOA filling the Gaps

Ford assembly line, 1913 Source: Wikipedia Are traditional BPM solutions still relevant or new approach is a must? I am not the only one who asks the question above. According to Gartner's analyst, Janet Hill, Traditional BPM is the past and "Improvisational Process" is the future.  "Improvisational Process" is less structured and more Agile than  Traditional BPM. Traditional BPM aims at more Automation and Process improvement and kills Innovation.    Let us try to answer the question above. In order to understand the issue I will use an analogy between Software Development and BPM Software Development. First stage: Automation The Typical Software developed in the 1950s automated simple organizational tasks. For example, instead of calculating profits by adding data manually, the data was entered into the computer and a programed calculation routine was executed.  Another simple example is a report. Instead of writing it manually, including data an...

More than six years ago I wrote a post titled: Vendors Survival: Will EMC Survive until 2018?   The trigger for writing that post was an article by Jason Hiner, the Editor in Chief of Zdnet . According to Hiner " E MC, the world’s leading storage vendor, is flush with cash and has the opportunity to make a big move ". Hiner thought of two possible big moves: 1. Dell and EMC merge i.e EMC would buy Dell 2. Cisco buys VMware I thought that the two moves suggested by Hiner will not be realized in 2009.  AS far as EMC Survival was concerned, I thought that the keys for the company's survival until 2018 are keeping its leadership in the Storage market and adapting to Cloud Computing.  I do not know if Cisco will acquire VMware, but on October, 12, 2015, Dell announced a deal  with MSD and Silver Lake to buy EMC for  67 billion USD in Cash and stock .   VMware owned partially (80%) by EMC is excluded from the deal. The deal is the largest ...

In a previous post titled: Consultants Typology: The Self-deprecating Consultant , I promised to depict examples of my consultancy, which was exactly the opposite of a Self-deprecating Consultant consultancy.  This post describe a Case Study of that type few decades ago. The title of this post is a quote of the words I said to a CIO. I implied that the product's Scalability is not adequate for thousands of users.  I could say it explicitly as well, however my goal was to perform a consultancy project and get paid for it.  The first step of the consultancy will be dedicated to proving that using the product he thought of is a guaranteed failure.  The second step will be a selection process of an adequate product.  The third step could be helping the customer to deploy the selected product properly. Surprise "No problem, I will be the first to deploy a large application based on this product".  He did no...

This post is the third post in the Consultants Typology posts. The first post is about two different Consultant types:  All Around Consultants and Niche Consultants . The second post described the Consultants who knows everything .  The term Self-deprecating was used in another post: Customer Typology: The Self-deprecating Customer . That post described a Customer who accepts any thing a Consultant recommends. This post describes an upside down state: The Consultant accepts anything the Customer would like him to recommend. The ideology of the Self-deprecating Consultant The Self-deprecating Consultant first priority is a satisfied customer. In order that the customer will be satisfied, he assumes that the customer, would like confirmation of his views, therefore he supports the customers views enthusiastically. For example, if the Customer has to select a Software product, the Consultant will praise the product, which he assumes the customer prefers. He will explain...

Bob Dylan 's song  in is about The Times They Are A-Changin'. Information Technology Leading Vendors are also changing. If a company does not adapt to changes it may not Survive or it may Survive but no longer as The Market Leader.  The first three sections of the post are about Computers Industry Revolutions. The fourth is about, the current revolution. The sections following these sections, are a discussion of Microsoft's Survival probability. You can't compete with NCR Thomas Watson Jr. Source: Wikipedia When Thomas Watson Jr. replaced his father as IBM's president in 1956, he was told that he will not be able to compete with the Computers Industry Leader NCR .  In 1956 I was in a kinder garden. In the beginning of the decade starting on 1970, I was working as a junior Computers Programmer: IBM was the  Computers Industry Leader.   NCR is now a player in the Automatic Teller Machines, Retail Store Automation and Self-Service Kiosks mar...

Recently I read a new Gartner Magic Quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is titled: Magic Quadrant for BPM-Platform-Based Case Management Frameworks  (12 March 2015).  It is a new Magic Quadrant relating to a subset of the Case Management market. Case Management frameworks is a growing market, which is important enough for producing a Magic Quadrant. The Magic Quadrant was written by Gartner's analysts Jannet B. Hill, Kenneth Chin and Rob Dunie.   What is a Case Management Framework? It is possible to build a solution based on Model Driven tools or on Coding tools or COTS (Commercial Of The Shelf).  if you need less flexibility COTS are better fit then modeling tool. Case Management Use Case is exactly the opposite of a fixed solution. It is management of complex and less structured Processes performed by Knowledge Workers. A Case Management Process include ad hoc decisions based on Knowledge, Content and interaction with other experts.   The Decision Centere...