Automating media processes in a service oriented architecture

The management of processes and systems is a complex and time-consuming activity for organizations and also an ongoing Information Technology (IT) challenge. Among the different approaches for bringing flexibility to the business processes and systems are Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM). The SOA approach has become popular providing services and interfaces, enabling integration of heterogeneous and distributed platforms and BPM leverages the cycles of improvements, control and evaluation of business processes. BPM and SOA should work together aiming at improving business processes and evolving systems architecture. One main problem to apply BPM and SOA is the lack of established processes and this work proposes a software process line in order to simplify variability control and enable the instantiation of new development process applying BPM and SOA. It also aims at developing an environment to support the proposed software process line in order to automate the process, integrating industrial tools with one specifically developed to perform the transformation of UMA models into BPM notation. The main contribution of this work is the definition of the software process line for engineering service-oriented products. It is highly relevant to software industry since software process lines lacks experiments, practices and tools.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to support the application of a combined BPM (business process management)/SOA (service‐oriented architecture) approach and contribute to the body of knowledge on the business value of SOA.Design/methodology/approachThis case study highlights the promising results of a process reengineering project at Belgacom Mobile, Belgium's largest mobile telecommunications operator. The reengineering effort centered around a key automation pillar involving in particular the optimization of the SIM card ordering process. SOA principles were applied to ensure both the flexibility of the redesigned process and its capability of dealing with newly emerging SIM card types. This case demonstrates the potential benefits of combining BPM and SOA concepts to establish IT‐enabled process innovation.FindingsIn terms of performance improvement, the studied project resulted in: increased process flexibility and consistency, considerably shorter lead times, and enhanced process control.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings from this case study present useful insights for other companies trying to reap the benefits of combined BPM and SOA. However, the single case study approach presents some limitations to the generalizability of the proposed learning points and concepts. Some case specific features such as the sector or company size might influence the generalizability. Nevertheless, the paper rather intends to trigger conceptual thinking about IT‐enabled process innovation and an architectural approach.Originality/valueThe added value of this project, which contributes to the general understanding of SOA potential for BPM, lies in its innovative approach, whereby product and process are separated by means of production process ID creation. The redesign approach thus provides a sustainable answer to the ever shortening life cycle of products and technologies. In particular process practitioners will find value in reading the learning points from this paper.

Acknowledgements. Foreword. Chapter 1. Introduction. Chapter 2. What is Application Integration? 2.1. The economy: the engine of integration. 2.2. The history and the issues of application integration. 2.3. Consequences for IT. 2.4. Integration typologies. 2.4.1. Classifying the integration problem types. 2.4.2. Classifying the applications. 2.5. EAI: Integrating enterprise applications (A2A). 2.5.1. Accounting interpretation: EAI precursor. 2.5.2. EAI today. 2.6. Integrating inter-enterprise exchanges (B2B). 2.7. Coupling A2A and B2B: A2B (or Business Collaboration). 2.8. Managing business processes (BPM). 2.9. Service-oriented architectures (SOA). Chapter 3. Levels in Integration Services. 3.1. Transport and connectivity. 3.1.1. Defining partners. 3.1.2. Data transport. 3.1.3. Connectivity. 3.1.4. Supervising transport. 3.2. Adapting the information. 3.2.1. Transformation. 3.2.2. Routing. 3.2.3. Storage. 3.2.4. Defining the rules. 3.2.5. Supervising exchanges. 3.3. Automating business processes. 3.3.1. Modeling business processes. 3.3.2. Executing business processes. 3.3.3. Supervising business processes. 3.4. Business process and integration: mediation and exchange. 3.4.1. Business process level and integration level. 3.4.2. Mediation process sub-level. 3.4.3. Exchange process sub-level. 3.4.4. Interaction between the sub-levels. 3.4.5. Interaction between integration and business process (BPM). 3.5. Choosing the exchange architecture. 3.5.1. Synchronous/asynchronous communication. 3.5.2. Architecture: centralized or distributed? Chapter 4. Types of Integration Projects. 4.1. Integrating a single application. 4.1.1. Exchange cartography. 4.1.2. The integration platform. 4.2. IT infrastructure projects. 4.2.1. Urbanization of information systems. 4.2.2. IT exchange infrastructure. 4.3. Integrating inter-enterprise exchanges. 4.3.1. Exchanging electronic documents (EDI). 4.3.2. XML standards. 4.3.3. Inter-enterprise spaghetti system. 4.3.4. Inter-enterprise exchange platforms. 4.3.5. Single Window initiatives. 4.4. Managing business processes. 4.4.1. Points of departure. 4.4.2. BPM project opportunity: choosing the processes. 4.4.3. The approach. 4.4.4. Expected results. 4.5. Implementing a service architecture. 4.5.1. Characteristics of an SOA. 4.5.2. Elements of an SOA infrastructure. 4.5.3. Applicable norms and standards. Chapter 5. Application Integration Tools. 5.1. Brokers. 5.2. Application servers. 5.3. Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). 5.4. BPM tools. Chapter 6. Understanding Integration Failures. 6.1. High failure rates. 6.2. The technological approach. 6.2.1. New technology or new packaging? 6.2.2. Technology confronts reality. Chapter 7. Integration Myths. 7.1. The mirage of the single tool. 7.1.1. A conservative choice: example and consequences. 7.1.2. Modern architectural choice: example and consequences. 7.2. XML: miracle format. 7.3. Business adapters: simplifying the implementation. 7.3.1. Business adapter: implementation - maintenance - problem. 7.3.2. By way of a conclusion on business adapters. 7.4. Java: the proof of a modern solution. 7.4.1. The real reason for Java. 7.4.2. Limitations of an all-Java integration solution. 7.5. Files: the poor cousins of application integration. 7.6. Process and services are everything. 7.6.1. BPM and SOA: top-down approach - from business to IT. 7.6.2. EAI and B2B: bottom-up approach - from IT to business. 7.6.3. Complementary approaches. Chapter 8. Integration and IT Urbanization. 8.1. IT urbanization review. 8.2. Limits of urbanization without an integration solution. 8.3. How do integration solutions support IT urbanization? 8.4. Limits of integration solutions without IT urbanization. 8.5. How does IT urbanization support integration solutions? 8.6. The need to correlate integration solutions and urbanization. Chapter 9. Choosing an Application Integration Solution . 9.1. General approach. 9.2. Methodology for calculating return on investment (ROI). 9.2.1. Introduction to the method. 9.2.2. Equations: maintaining the language of integration. 9.2.3. Operational workload gains through centralized supervision. 9.2.4. Quality of service improvements. 9.3. Opportunity study. 9.3.1. Analyzing the real needs of the enterprise. 9.3.2. Real needs and the state of the art. 9.3.3. Identifying possible business benefits. 9.4. Go/NoGo from General Management. 9.5. The search for a candidate: Request for Information (RFI). 9.5.1. Why issue an RFI? 9.5.2. Key points in an integration RFI. 9.6. Request for Proposal (RFP) or specifications document. 9.6.1. Interest and spirit of an RFP. 9.6.2. Myths: standard questionnaire + one-stop supplier. 9.6.3. Key points in an RFP for application integration. 9.7. Presentations from the candidates. Chapter 10. Deployment Methodology. 10.1. Introduction to the method. 10.2. Deployment methodology: general principles. 10.3. Special case: deploying BPM and SOA. 10.4. Economic models of cost allocation. 10.4.1. Cost allocation linked to usage. 10.4.2. Cost allocation linked to usage and services (developed model). Chapter 11. Operational Examples of Implementation . 11.1. Rationalizing bonds purchase order management (banking). 11.1.1. The context. 11.1.2. The choices. 11.1.3. The solution. 11.1.4. The results. 11.2. An EAI hub (telecommunications). 11.2.1. The context. 11.2.2. The choice. 11.2.3. Implementing the pilot: first difficulties. 11.2.4. Integration tests: disturbing results. 11.2.5. How did we end up here? Consequences of architectural choices. 11.2.6. Performance tests: catastrophic results. 11.2.7. Report card: final decision. 11.2.8. The lesson: what we could have done. 11.3. A2A and B2B (retail). 11.3.1. The context. 11.3.2. The choice. 11.3.3. The solution. 11.3.4. The results. 11.4. BPM and SOA in service delivery. 11.4.1. The context. 11.4.2. The choice. 11.4.3. The solutions. 11.4.4. The results. 11.4.5. Points to watch for this type of solution. Conclusion . Bibliography. Index.

Information System is one of the key domain in which lot of research has been done in the past few years. Applying Information systems to heterogeneous and distributed environments is one of the current research areas. Business Process Management Systems is the information systems which deal with the administration of tasks in the business processes, organizational structures, or in the related context. The Workflow Management system, the early idea of BPM, controls the workflow in an organization, data transfer, and integration of legacy information systems with existing programs and program modules, delegation of business tasks. Offering task management services especially modeling of business processes and underlying organizations, BPM serves it meaning and incorporates the WFM system. BPM supporting the use of knowledge concerning the awareness/unawareness of integrated software, and analysis of processes and organizational structure in terms of verification, modification, evaluation are key management in BPM system I.INTRODUCTION TO BPM: Combination of corporate restructuring and mergers urged the department and processes to be automated and linked together. Unfortunately it created largely disconnected spaghetti of systems and applications. Business Process Management (BPM) was born from a strong need to streamline internal processes and connections between both internal and external functions. It provides ability to model, monitor, manage and manipulate processes quickly in response to changes in strategy and market forces. BPM is an extension of classical Work Flow Management (WFM) systems and approaches. BPM delivers the maximum utility of legacy system. It is a method for revolutionizing the way the work moves throughout an organization. II.COMPONENTS OF BPM: The four key elements in Business Process Management are: Process modeling, Process rule, Process management, and Process performance analytics. Process modeling: Process modeling describes the flow of information (business process).It helps in building a model of process and mapping into an implementation frame work. Modeling requires a consistent analysis and representation of the processes. It forms the basis for the userspecific process environment. Process Rule: Process Rule is a heart of the BPM. It involves execution of discrete steps & integration of information. A process rules engine is used for this purpose. The engine is to monitor and manage the given steps by providing a flow control over the business process. If a process fails or delayed, a compensated action can be done to rectify. Process Management: Process Management is to correlate business/application events to fundamental business metrics .It enables the organization to monitor and optimize the business process. Once the process has been analyzed, modeled and the associated rules are formed. The next stage involves the visualization and management. Visualization means transaction data ranging from holistic to process-state or client state specific rules. Process Performance Analytics: Process Performance Analytics is a transition data source available for sophisticated management analytics .This data should be available on a retrospective or real-time basis. It should answer to one of the most difficult question like “how much does it cost to process a specific transaction?” By this way BPM mainly addresses four components. They are Work Flow Management, Content and records management Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) and Business Activity monitoring (BAM). III.RELEVENCE TO SYSTEM INTEGRATION: BPM can be fitted easily on the top of existing IT system. It is the Process rules that governs all the happenings and optimizes the process. BPM will not be able to work without the connectivity provided by the EAI layer. EAI layer provides BPM to gain and measure the value from the investment. On the other hand, BPM provides value to the EAI technology layer of Information technology. BPM layer offers business management the view of the message processing layer. It is used to unlock the value of the information held in the integration layer. It is also used to gather data of every transaction in the lifecycle. IV.APPLICATION OF BPM: BPM can be applied to any application which needs these advantages. BPM reduces unnecessary high losses in time critical transactions, helps to provide any critical information, practical application yield fast ROI ,better control over the information, identifying and maximizing the benefits faster, better analysis and tracking, provides enterprise-wide visibility of business processes, improve the effectiveness of the core operations, provides ability to coordinate interactions between information systems, business process and the people, flexible and easily changed by non-technical business people.

Constant development of Transmission System Operator's (TSO) market functions calls for a flexible IT solutions that can cope with constant changes and upgrades, and in the same time provide efficient alternative to traditional approaches. Implementation of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Business Process Management (BPM) within the TSO enterprise is presented in the paper. Model for operational reserves procurement using SOA and BPM is described and elaborated.

In recent years, Business Process Management (BPM) enabled by Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) proved to be a successful in improving the Business-IT alignment. Today, BPM enabled by SOA requires transformation between process models. Primarily, because specifications used for designing business process models and executable business process models differ. Process model transformation expresses itself as the Business-IT gap reducing potential operational alignment of the business and IT. In this paper, we review and classify state-of-the-art solution for the operational Business-IT alignment in BPM enabled by SOA. For solutions classification, we define three distinct types of approaches: methodological, transformation and enhancement. We discuss each type characteristics and its main strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, for each type, we provide examples from literature and discuss them. Based on existing works strengths and weaknesses we give ideas for a new solution based on an enhancement approach. The proposed solution has potential to improve Business-IT alignment through simplification of the BPM enabled by SOA.

To resolve the problem of agile that can satisfy growing consumer expectations and stay ahead of the competition, this paper introduces a solution of architecture combining service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business process management (BPM). First, we explain the definition and characteristics of SOA; second, we introduce the concept and mechanism of BPM and BPMS; finally, we give an simple architecture with combination of SOA and BPM.

Enterprise application integration makes data sharing easier, efficient and provides flexibility for organizations to seize opportunities and respond to stakeholder needs. Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (FMIPA) Tanjungpura University is an organization that wants to apply information technology effectively to support its business processes. Currently the application at FMIPA is built with different platforms and databases so that it cannot be integrated to share data between parts of the organization. FMIPA intends to build a service-oriented technology architecture to support the realization of organizational goals. SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) can be used as a framework for enterprise application integration. SOA adoption is often not as expected because organizations do not plan their processes comprehensively. It is necessary to measure the maturity level of the organization's SOA adoption so that the current state of the organization's SOA and future expectations can be found. ISO/IEC 16680 (OSIMM) is a method for measuring the SOA maturity level with 7 levels of maturity and 7 dimensions. To expedite the SOA adoption process in FMIPA, SOA maturity level was measured using ISO/IEC 16680. Based on measurements of the seven dimensions of SOA at ISO/IEC 16680, it was found that the current level of SOA adoption maturity (As-Is) at FMIPA Untan was at the level one (Silo), while the expected maturity level (To-Be) is level four (Service). Gap analysis then carried out related to the gap in maturity levels, and is followed by making recommendations dan roadmap for SOA adoption.

Business Process Management is often associated with software to manage, control, and support operational processes. And in order to meet dynamic and new business needs with flexible information technology solutions, more and more enterprises intend to build their own IT infrastructure under Service Oriented Architecture. Currently analyzing and refining the existing business process models for configuring enterprise information system is a hot area of research. In our approach, we apply the process mining technology to the event logs to discover the scenarios, each of which mainly consists of task originators, sub-process (ordering of service invocations) and business objects. Based on composition of these scenarios, the enterprise is able to redesign the process models and combine closely the business process with the services provided by different application systems in SOA. When new business requirements emerge, solution designers can devise a flexibly composite process that makes the best use of existing scenarios and glue the scenarios together with least augmentation or modification.

The ability to rapidly find potential business partners as well as rapidly set up a collaborative business process is desirable in the face of market turbulence. Collaborative business processes are increasingly dependent on the integration of business information systems. Traditional linking of business processes has a large ad hoc character. Implementing situational enterprise services in an appropriate way will deliver the business more flexibility, adaptability and agility. Service-oriented architectures (SOA) are rapidly becoming the dominant computing paradigm. It is now being embraced by organizations everywhere as the key to business agility. Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX on the other hand provide good user interactions for successful service discovery, selection, adaptation, invocation and service construction. They also balance automatic integration of services and human interactions, disconnecting content from presentation in the delivery of the service. Another Web technology, such as semantic Web, makes automatic service discovery, mediation and composition possible. Integrating SOA, Web 2.0 Technologies and Semantic Web into a service-oriented virtual enterprise connects business processes in a much more horizontal fashion. To be able run these services consistently across the enterprise, an enterprise infrastructure that provides enterprise architecture and security foundation is necessary. The world is constantly changing. So does the business environment. An agile enterprise needs to be able to quickly and cost-effectively change how it does business and who it does business with. Knowing, adapting to diffident situations is an important aspect of today’s business environment. The changes in an operating environment can happen implicitly and explicitly. The changes can be caused by different factors in the application domain. Changes can also happen for the purpose of organizing information in a better way. Changes can be further made according to the users' needs such as incorporating additional functionalities. Handling and managing diffident situations of service-oriented enterprises are important aspects of business environment. In the chapter, we will investigate how to apply new Web technologies to develop, deploy and executing enterprise services.

Nowadays, the problem in business process management (BPM) is that BPM systems should both be easy to use for business process developers and be based on a sound formal method. Business process management systems are often based on semiformal modeling techniques such as event-driven process chains (EPC) or UML. Unlike semiformal modeling techniques, the process calculus CSP comes with mature verification sup- port. Surprisingly little work has been done on using CSP for business process modeling and management. In this paper, we present our approach to business process management, which is based on the observation that CSP is well suited not only for specifying business processes and verifying work???ows but also for executing work???ows using our CSP4J framework. We report on a work???ow server, which is specified in CSP and implemented using our CSP4J framework. The server accepts work???ows that are modeled in CSP and also implemented using CSP4J. This allows us to integrate the mature verification support of CSP into both the management system itself and the development process of the end users’ business process definitions.

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has been widely used during the past decade due to its ability to seamlessly integrate various applications developed using different technologies. Web services based on open standards are the most commonly used technology to realize an SOA. Business processes are executed by appropriate orchestration of various services from different departments that belong to a single organization or from multiple organizations. Security is an important quality attribute that has to be built into any application that is developed using SOA. XML is the underlying technology for Web Service Description Language (WSDL), SOAP protocol and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). It is highly probable that an attacker could inject malicious information into these XML files to modify the flow of the business process. Further, SOAP was not designed with security in mind, it is possible to tamper the SOAP messages while they are in transit. There exist a number of such potential vulnerabilities which lead to possible security breach in the individual services. In an orchestrated business process, there are possibilities of more vulnerabilities. One of the existing tools namely WS-Attacker is only capable of testing the security of individual web services alone. In spite of the widespread usage of SOA, currently there is limited automatic tool support for testing the security provided by an entire SOA application involving service orchestration. In this context, this paper focuses on designing and implementing a plug-in for WS-Attacker to analyze a few security vulnerabilities present in SOA business processes.

In the modern business scenario, organizations are vesting high efforts in managing process sustainability as part of their operations management practices. The global environmental concerns for the welfare of the society have facilitated this change. Research studies have reported Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as one of the prerequisites in developing and maintaining efficient business processes. The process sustainability related initiatives and various processes related regulatory compliances have created the need for sophisticated IT tools like BPM (Business Process Management) and BI (Business Intelligence) in organizations. Thus with the advancement of ICT, a strong desire to enhance the business process performance through BPM and BI applications is felt across organizations. However, there is scant research available on leveraging the advantages of these applications in sustainability development. Therefore, this paper aims to present a conceptual architecture framework using an integrated BPM and BI solution to develop an orientation among practitioners and academicians towards the inclusion of ICT in attaining a sustainable, energy efficient business operations or processes. The framework is based on the literature pertaining to the role of BPM and BI in process sustainability as well as from the inputs of practitioners involved in the field of BPM and BI.

Business process design and monitoring are essential elements of Business Process Management (BPM), often relying on Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). However the current BPM approaches and standards have not sufficiently reduced the Business-IT gap. Today’s solutions are mostly domain-independent and platform-dependent, which limits the ability of business matter experts to express business intent and enact process change. In contrast, the approach presented in this paper focuses on BPM and SOA environments in a domain-dependent and platform-independent way. We propose to add a domain specific-layer on top of current solutions so business stakeholders can design and understand their processes in a more intuitive way. We rely on previously proposed technical solutions and integrate them in an end-to-end methodology (from design to monitoring and back). The appropriateness and the feasibility of the approach is justified through a use case and a complete prototype implementation.

On Demand Business concept, from IBM, shows how to coordinate the transformation of the enterprise organization and its technological infrastructure to bridge the gap between business and technology. This problem appears in most of information systems. This concept is based on Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to improve the connection between business services and software services.If companies can reach this On Demand Business context they could improve the software development process by applying standards like Model Driven Architecture (MDA), to separate business logic from software and technological platforms, and Business Process Management (BPM) to define business processes. In this article we propose a new approach that combines On Demand Business with MDA, BPM and SOA to improve software development process starting on business knowledge.The most important contribution of this approach to Knowledge Society is the method used to connect business knowledge with technological resources using a well defined architecture.KeywordsBusiness ProcessIntellectual CapitalService Orient ArchitectureSoftware ServiceBusiness Process ManagementThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.