Enterprise Decision Management - a Weblog

BEA on Event Driven Architecture Sounds a lot like EDM

Yesterday BEA Systems released a white paper summarizing their findings of a customer study regarding Business Process Management (BPM). The paper is titled “The State of the BPM Market – Business and IT: Solving Process Problems Together.” BEA also culled through numerous analyst and other industry expert insights to narrow in on the key trends driving adoption of BPM related technologies. There were two especially notable items in the report that show an Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) approach to operational decision automation, connection and improvement is becoming an increasingly mainstream concept – even if the term EDM isn’t the label.

EDM Helps Minimize Trade Offs Between Application Maintenance and Strategic Initiatives – So Says Forrester Research

While Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) is not called out specifically in Forrester Research’s January 28 report, “The State Of Enterprise Software Adoption: 2007 To 2008,” it describes issues top of mind among technology executives addressable with EDM technologies, such as Business Rules Management Systems (BRMSs). The report is based on results of a survey of 1,017 IT decision-makers in North American- and European-based enterprises.

Why are enterprise applications so dumb?

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) In general Enterprise Applications rely on human intelligence - Humans must use dashboards and reports to learn from their data, most decisions are managed with work lists, someone has to log on and act-on...

Gartner’s 2008 Predictions Include Bright Future for Enterprise Decision Management

Gartner recently issued two “Predicts: 2008” reports highlighting their expectations for Enterprise Architecture and the Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) Market. Both recognize noteworthy and highly complementary trends reflecting the value of Enterprise Decision Management (EDM), particularly Business Rules Management Systems (BRMSs) supporting EDM principles.

SAP, business rules and decision management

(Posted by guest blogger, James Taylor) As anyone watching the business rules space will have noticed, SAP recently bought Yasu, one of the small rules vendors. Gartner wrote about this here and made a couple of useful comments on the...

While Forrester Envisions Consolidation for the 3 "Bs", it's Happening for Apps and BI Vendors

Cognos and Microstrategy are the two remaining independent Business Intelligence (BI) software giants following today’s news that SAP was purchasing Business Objects. Speculation was building online last week that a deal was in the works and in fact for much of this year since Oracle purchased Hyperion, such rumors have been the case.

Insightful Hindsight on Forrester's 3 “Bs” Points to Need for EDM

While reading recent news in the Process Management section of Intelligent Enterprise today, I noticed a September 27, 2007 post by Sandy Kemsley titled “Forrester: Why BI, BPM and Rules Technologies Will Converge.” Sandy was part of a panel discussion at Forrester Research’s Technology Leadership Forum (Sept. 24-27) focused, in part, on the contents of a Forrester report issued to coincide with the event. I previously blogged about that report, titled “The Dynamic Business Applications Imperative,” by John Rymer and Connie Moore.

Decision Management at the Heart of Future Enterprise Applications, so Says Forrester Research

Respected technology prognosticators John Rymer and Connie Moore of Forrester Research just published a new paper titled, “The Dynamic Business Application Imperative” (September 24, 2007, For CIOs). Rymer and Moore envision a new generation of enterprise application that some IT organizations today are cobbling together in order to meet ever changing business, technical and marketplace requirements.

PerformancePoint Points the Way Toward Mainstream EDM

Microsoft Office PerformancePoint points the way toward mainstream adoption of EDM.

The last decomposition of the application

One of the reasons for a focus on decisions and decision services is to complete the decomposition of the old, monolithic application (thanks Mark). Think about it. If you embed decisions - business logic - in your applications, you hide...

Using decision management to complement ERP

Aberdeen just published this nice little report - Aligning IT to Business Processes: How BPM is Complementing ERP and Custom Applications (sponsored so free in return for your email address) - which makes for interesting reading in terms of how...

Remember: Don’t Crush ‘Em, Restore ‘Em

The title of this posting is taken from a saying repeated at the conclusion of a cable television show about classic cars, and aptly summarizes the focus of this newsbit I saw today on DM Review’s website: “Major Software AG Customer Survey Reveals New Priorities for Legacy Systems”. Software AG, an infrastructure software provider, surveyed 180 of its clients to understand their views on legacy systems. The results cited in the article parallel the value of Business Rules Management Systems (BRMS) to legacy systems; all good news for Software AG and BRMS vendors, maybe less good news for application vendors trying to sell their latest wares.

Got MDM? You know EDM Better than you think

For some time now, I have recognized analogies between Enterprise Decision Management (EDM) and Master Data Management (EDM). They both share attributes such as the separation/abstraction of “inputs” from operational or analytical systems and recognition of these inputs as assets to be managed and available for reuse across the enterprise. It’s interesting to note also that both have impacts on analytical and operational systems, yet originated from different points of view. In the case of EDM, high volume operational decisions have historically been the focus, while MDM stems from problems in managing consistency in data warehouses.

SOA, BPM (and EDM) for Enterprise Applications

Bill Swanton and Ian Finley at AMR Research recently published "SOA and BPM for Enterprise Applications: A Dose of Reality" (subscription required). This paper considered the value of service-oriented architecture (SOA) and how it is to be found in business...

Live from InterACT: The Intelligent Enterprise (Air Products)

I am attending InterACT San Francisco 2007 this week and blogging live (or nearly live) from the sessions. This session is "The Intelligent Enterprise (Air Products)" and Charlie Lewis gave an interesting discussion of the state of intelligent enterprise. Charlie...

The challenge for Enterprise Applications

Nothing sparked a blog posting today so, in the interest of not neglecting my readers, I thought I would post some thoughts on Enterprise Applications In general Enterprise Applications rely on human intelligence - Humans must use dashboards and reports...

If 5% of business is unique, is it all decisioning?

Shai Agassi recently presented on SAP's roadmap and one of his key points was how much of business was common. As CRMchump said: “"Dive strategic differentiation" got a bit more play from Agassi, who interestingly claimed that "more than 95...

A case study - rules in manufacturing

I was reading about a client of ours, Air Products, last week and I thought they made an interesting case study. I also reviewed a presentation they made at the Americas SAP User Group. Air Products is a $8bn global...