“B” is our middle name. We have “B” scattered throughout everything that we do. At times we fight over who owns the “B” word. I’m in search of a unified “B” story and solution. IMO, if we had this, it’d be tough to compete with us in any of the “B” acronyms.
The “B” Business TLA’s: Business Service Management (BSM), Business Process Management (BPM), Business Performance Management (BPM), Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), Business Transaction Management (BTM), Business Intelligence (BI) and I’m sure there are others.
What’s it going to take to have a unified “B” story and solution? Sure, we’ve probably got mentions in individual roadmaps and presentations of how we’ll integrate with this, share data what that, use Cognos here or there, send events from one tool to the other, etc. but what about a real “B” solution? IMO, these approaches just prolong client value and significantly delay any real innovation in core products.
What’s the cost of “forking” and creating a new solution entirely? One that focuses on becoming best of class in all of the “B” areas (ok, at least do all of them pretty darn good)? One that can be implemented and managed by one team free from (well, probably not) the organizational politics that’d exist if it was a “solution by integration” solution. One that has the best possible chance of truly aligning business and IT. Ok, this is probably cost prohibitive, but its GOT TO BE THE END GOAL!
This is where the politics come in unfortunately…where would you start? Which “B” is the most important “B”? Is it Business Service Management – my preference is here of course. Our friends in other organizations would see it other ways for sure. We must find the right way to develop the “B” story and solutions in ways that are most beneficial to the client. We must include content in each others products that “treads” on each others turf. We must have joint releases that build towards the unified “B” story and solution. When we release a new business process management suite (BPMS) we must include dashboards, models and integrations that provide value OUT OF THE BOX inside our BSM product. This must be backed up with the business and services consultants who have consultative based skills to guide our clients through the process because this isn’t about the product as much as it is about working through the organizational problems and politics.
A unified “B” story and solution may sound like a pipe dream, but it’s what clients really want to strive towards and our competitors are making giant strides in this direction. What would your ideal “B” solution look like? If you were king for a day …
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Hi Doug,
The only way to unify the “B’s” is to have an overriding framework which provides a reference point for other solutions to share a common vision of how IT supports business.
No-one should look to create a single application to unify these things as each client deployment would warrant a different set of deliverables, but a step along the path of progress would have those deliverables aligned with each other by sharing a common contextual view.
You may be interested in reading about the OBASHI methodology, which is based around a core principle: that IT exists for one reason, namely, to manage the flow of data between business assets. There are a few “Bs” in the ‘Fields of Use section’.
And, if you’ll permit a little naked self-promotion, you might also be interested in Stroma, which has been developed to make it easy for business and IT to speak a common language.
PJW
I agree that the point solutions in each of the “B” areas are always going to have a place within certain client scenarios. What I’m thinking of here is creation of a more well rounded product that incorporates capabilities from each specific “B” domain area. We’re spending way too much time on these solution sets that are integration on the back end or front end with little core capabilities or content in the middle.
Integration based solutions are not easily implemented and maintained over the long haul when products span multiple organizations or silos within a typical company. If the goal is to work towards mature Business Service Management (BSM) where we align everything to the underlying IT infrastructure that supports it, we need to incorporate information from all of the “B” domains. No other vendor today has a single product that can span all of this and I think with the right vision, IBM could do this.
The other challenge of course is with the organizational maturity and capability of the traditional tools group. This group must mature into becoming more consultative in nature and be able to dialog with both the business and IT to fully capture the essence of the other “B” domains and incorporate into the corporate Business Service Management (BSM) solution.
Doug