Business process management is so much more than enterprise application integration

Enterprise application integration (EAI), essentially a technique involving the linking together, or integration, of applications making up a technical process, was traditionally the first choice of the chief information officer (CIO) - but not necessarily that of the chief executive officer (CEO) or the chief financial officer (CFO).

This is because the CIO`s top priority was to solve his "islands of technology" IT architectural problem with the implementation of an easy, fast integration layer. However, the fact remained that the EAI or middleware layer still needed something to manage the business processes involved.

"This is probably the reason why, despite the fact that they have `come of age` and usually feature in a typical IT architecture, they have never taken off to the extent that was initially envisaged."

This is according to Mark Ehmke, managing director of Staffware South Africa.

"When the economy tightens up like it has over the past couple of years, businesses are generally loathe to spend hard to come by budget on anything which does not have demonstrable business benefits," Ehmke points out.

"For this reason, while purely technical implementations such as EAI and middleware have been hard to justify, BPM, which essentially links and holistically controls the all-important business (not technical) processes together, has been much easier to justify," he explains.

"BPM solutions are thriving in the marketplace, simply because businesses perceive them as being absolutely necessary," he adds.

"BPM software leverages your existing IT investments and enables organisations to automate rules-based processes which improve efficiency, management control and customer service while creating a more agile enterprise," Ehmke explains.

"It takes a high-level view of the many actions that are necessary in the core operation of an organisation`s processes and builds a framework for their management. It separates the process from the underlying application logic, linking the company`s people, systems and applications," he says.

"Several of the EAI vendors are now offering a form of BPM as an add-on to their technology layer. However, these usually focus on system-to-system process integration and generally do not take the people that are always involved in the process into account," Ehmke comments.

Ehmke maintains that if one wants to understand the position of BPM in today`s marketplace as opposed to EAI and middleware, one needs to take a brief look at the history of IT integration technologies and solutions.

"There were basically three approaches taken in the industry to integration," he explains.

"The first one was to write `stovepipe` integration solutions, which just linked system-to-system and generally were extremely inflexible. Then companies started promoting the development of a middleware or messaging integration layer. However, these products were usually proprietary and typically not ubiquitous or overarching in terms of their functionalities," he says.

"More recently, an object-oriented integration approach has emerged - one which features Web services, based on Microsoft`s .NET and Sun`s J2EE technologies.

"These newer technologies have made it possible to develop a ubiquitous standard of open integration, which is flexible and interoperable, and spans all operational platforms," he emphasises.

"True BPM works with each and all of these approaches, providing an independent process layer that sits on top of the existing IT systems, protecting and integrating with previous investment in technology and has no `lock-in` for customers. For example, the Staffware Process Suite provides a best of breed, open BPM system that enables the integration of complex processes irrespective of a customer`s chosen technical standards architecture," Ehmke highlights.

"The success of the Staffware Process Suite is indeed yet another powerful indicator that, although EAI and middleware still do have a role to play in the integration of technical processes, it is crucial that there is an overarching BPM layer in place to manage the business processes," he concludes.