Corticon Placed in Gartner's BRE Magic Quadrant

02/28/2005

Corticon Technologies, a provider of business rules management software, announced that it had been placed in the Leaders’ quadrant of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Business Rule Engines.
Gartner's 2005 Business Rules Engine Magic Quadrant denotes that vendors in the Leaders quadrant are most likely to have "high revenue in this market, high market share in terms of customers and products that are of interest to a wide audience."

“The increased emphasis on business agility is driving many organizations to BREs,” said Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, Jim Sinur. The report also noted that “The phrase might be ‘on demand’ or ‘just in time,’ but there is a premium on agility for most business sectors today, and we only expect the demand for agility to increase during the next 10 years.”

“We view our position in OEM and Reseller relationships, along with our direct customer wins, as an indication of where the rules market is going. The market is voting for a solution that delivers new levels of control to the business,” said Mark Allen, co-founder and CEO of Corticon Technologies. “We have approached the problem from the business’s point of view, and in doing so, we have delivered not only new levels of business-friendly control, but also the most advanced technology to assure the quality and reliability of automated business rules.”

Pegasystems Rated Leader in Business Rules Engine Market
February 24, 2005 - Gartner, Inc.'s "Magic Quadrant"* report evaluating the leading companies in the business rules engine (BRE) market positions Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA) in the 'leader' quadrant, Pegasystems Inc. announced today.

According to Gartner, leaders are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market. "The increased emphasis on business agility is driving many organisations to BREs, among other agility-focused technologies," wrote Jim Sinur, Gartner, vice-president and distinguished analyst. "Other agility technologies include business process management, web services and model-driven generators. The phrase might be 'on demand' or 'just in time,' but there is a premium on agility for most business sectors today, and we only expect the demand for agility to increase during the next 10 years."

Pegasystems' rules engine technology is the foundation of its smart business process management (BPM) solutions which manage a broad array of complex,
changing processes. "We're long past the point where a hard-coded
application can satisfy the pace today's market demands," said Pegasystems
CEO Alan Trefler. "Pegasystems' unification of business rules with business processes provides customers real-time business agility that can broadly improve business effectiveness."

The report evaluated a wide range of rules engine vendors. To be included in the report, companies had to market and sell their rules engines as a separate product, have more than $3 million in rules engine revenue and 10 referenceable clients. The rules engines themselves had to include explicit rules, more than one form of rule representation, management features, truth maintenance and/or global rule firing results.

Sun Expands Preventive Services Offering

February 24, 2005

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Sun Microsystems continues to evolve its Sun Preventive Services (SPS), and is preparing to expand its initial offering of managing Solaris systems for a selected number of high-end data center customers to offering proactive maintenance services to a broader set of customers through Sun and its iForce partner network.

......
The heart of the SPS offering is something called the Enterprise RAS (eRAS) business rules engine, which Sun has created to manage its outsourcing clients. The eRAS engine contains the best practices Sun has learned through its partners and largest services customers, and it is used to manage risks--specifically, the risks to IT systems that are associated with people, processes, or products. This is a very holistic view of IT systems management, and it is a concession to the idea that just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, an IT organization's uptime is only as good as the components (people, processes, or products) that make up that IT organization. The eRAS tool quantifies and helps manage the availability of servers, but it goes beyond that and quantifies all of the potential risks associated with the data center.

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Now is the Right Time for Real-Time BI

Article published in DM Review Magazine September 2004 Issue By Colin White ........ Right-Time Automated Actions Right-time automated actions improve the speed of business decision making and increase business productivity by automating the decision-making process. This is achieved by encapsulating business user expertise in a set of business rules that are embedded in a rules-driven workflow engine. As BI is produced (by a right-time performance management application, for example), it is passed to the rules engine for evaluation against associated business rules. These rules determine what action needs to be taken based on the results of the evaluation. ....... Business Rules As shown in Figure 4, there are several different types of business rules associated with BPM. Analysis rules are used to calculate performance metrics from detailed business transaction data, and context rules enable performance metrics to be tied to business goals and forecasts. Some basic BPM automation can be achieved by applying exception rules to metrics and sending an alert to a business user when a metric exceeds a threshold defined in the exception rule. Decision making can be further improved by including in the alert the Web address of a guided analysis workflow that identifies other analyses and reports that can be run to further investigate the issue. Figure 4: Types of BI Business Rules Full right-time automated actions can be achieved by defining the manual decision-making process that business users go through as a series of action rules in a workflow. These action workflows can then be implemented in a rules engine to automate the decision-making process. A rules engine may be embedded in a BPM application or may be an external business rules engine (BRE) product. The benefit of using an external product is that it can act as a central repository for defining and managing business rules. The issue with an external BRE is integrating it into the BI environment. One company that has been involved in both business intelligence and business rules engines is Fair Isaac. The company's decision management set of products is a good example of how BI and business rules technologies are beginning to converge. .....

Enterprise Architecture View:
Business Rules, Business Meta Data & Data Stewardship Component of the Complete Meta Data Model

Column published in DM Review Magazine September 2004 Issue By Michael F. Jennings

This column is adapted from the book Universal Meta Data Models by David Marco & Michael Jennings (John Wiley & Sons).

This month, we continue our examination of the complete meta data model with the business rules, business meta data and data stewardship component area of the model and the various subject areas that compose it.

The business rules, business meta data and data stewardship model component supports the business user view of the business. Having access to the business rules of an organization through implementation of the managed meta data environment (MME) is critical to the success of that organization. It provides one common source for documenting, maintaining and approving the rules that run an organization. This common repository of information enables decisions to be made quickly. Business meta data allows us to organize data according to the way the business views and understands the data. Data stewards are individuals in an organization who act as conduits between technology and the business portion of a company. Such people align the business needs with the technology supporting them. It is critical that an organization establish data stewards for these and many other reasons. By assigning data stewards, we empower users to take ownership of their meta data, thus improving overall corporate performance.

This component of the complete meta model contains three subject areas. The business rules subject area addresses the components that compose business rules. The business meta data subject area references meta data, which provides the context to the content of the data that a business user will access. The method in which the user accesses the business meta data is also captured. The data stewardship subject area describes the users who are responsible for the business direction, decisions and approvals that are documented in this portion of the model.

Business rules represent the logic applied to calculate or derive a business-related value. They are the rules that describe why data appears the way it does. It may contain a formula used to derive a value, or it may point to a warehouse element value that was derived directly from a source element. The formula may range from simple to very complex. Formulas may also contain processing logic. The most important entity in this subject area is the BUSINESS RULE. This entity contains the highest level information about the rules developed and approved by data stewards. These are the rules that are used within an organization's decision-making process. All of the other entities in this subject area provide further definition and clarification of the business rules. A BUSINESS RULE ASSOCIATION documents the relationship between BUSINESS RULEs. This entity points a business user to other rules that may provide additional information related to the BUSINESS RULE they are researching. The BUSINESS RULE RELATIONSHIP TYPE is a decode table.

Business meta data defines the information used to organize the data found in the data enterprise into subject areas and to describe the individuals who act on or are affected by the data. We create groupings of data that represent the way the data is viewed by the business. DATA GROUPs, DATA PACKAGEs and DATA ELEMENTs may be organized into subject areas to aid in the management of the data. SUBJECT AREAs allow the data to be organized the way the business uses the data and are not limited to a single database or hardware platform. Even if there are technical constraints that do not permit data to be linked within a particular database, that data can still be related through a SUBJECT AREA. SUBJECT AREA represents a high-level grouping of a business. It is used to classify business rules and business tables. BUSINESS GROUPs and BUSINESS ELEMENTs may be assigned to a SUBJECT AREA. The entities DATA ELEMENT SUBJECT AREA and DATA GROUP SUBJECT AREA are used to show this association. SUBJECT AREA BUSINESS RULE links a SUBJECT AREA to one or many BUSINESS RULE(s). The same BUSINESS RULE may also be attached to one or many SUBJECT AREA(s).

BUSINESS RULEs may apply to a specific DATA ELEMENT or DATA GROUP. Two entities, DATA GROUP BUSINESS RULE and DATA ELEMENT BUSINESS RULE, are used to associate them with a BUSINESS RULE. A DATA GROUP or DATA ELEMENT can be associated with many BUSINESS RULEs and a BUSINESS RULE may be associated with many DATA GROUPs and/or DATA ELEMENTs. The PERSON ENTITY contains information about the people that play roles within the organization. ORGANIZATION is used to organize people in a way that reflects their roles and assignments within an ORGANIZATION.

Data is the most important asset of a company. Data stewardship assigns users to the management, approval and maintenance of the data definitions and the corresponding business rules. A data steward acts as a conduit between technology and the business users. The steward assists in aligning the business needs with the technology that supports them. It is a data steward's responsibility to make sure that the business can make the optimum use of its data resources. Multiple data stewards may be assigned to the same business attribute. The different stewards perform different roles, ranging from an executive sponsor to the programmer who maintains the repository information. A DATA STEWARD defines a PERSON who is a conduit between technology and the business areas of a company. Such a person aligns the business needs with the technology supporting them. A DATA STEWARD is a general term for a person who may fill one of many roles. The details about the PERSON performing the role of DATA STEWARD can be found via the relationship between DATA STEWARD and PERSON. A DATA STEWARD may be assigned to many other entities. The entities in this component that have a relationship with DATA STEWARD are DATA ELEMENT, DATA GROUP, DATA PACKAGE, SUBJECT AREA and BUSINESS RULE. Each of these entities may have one or many DATA STEWARD(s), and each DATA STEWARD may be associated with one or many of these entities. An associative entity exists to resolve each of these relationships. These entities are BUSINESS RULE DATA STEWARD, DATA ELEMENT STEWARD, DATA GROUP STEWARD, DATA PACKAGE STEWARD and SUBJECT AREA STEWARD.

Next month, we will take a closer look at the XML, messaging and business transactions component area of the complete meta data model.

For more information on related topics visit the following related portals...
Business Rules and Meta Data.

---

Michael Jennings is an enterprise architect and global data warehousing strategist at Hewitt Associates. He has more than 20 years of information technology experience in the manufacturing, telecommunications, insurance and human resources industries. Jennings speaks frequently on business intelligence/architecture issues at major industry conferences and has been an instructor of information technology at the University of Chicago's Graham School. He is a coauthor of the book Universal Meta Data Models and a contributing author of the book Building and Managing the Meta Data Repository. Jennings may be reached at (847) 295-5000 or via e-mail at mike.jennings@hewitt.com.

CA CleverPath Aion r10 Enhances Quality of Business Processes and Improves Compliance

Enables Diverse Users to Define, Implement, Monitor
                and Streamline Business Rules and Processes

   ISLANDIA, N.Y., Feb. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Computer Associates
International, Inc. (NYSE: CA) today announced CleverPath Aion r10, a robust
business process management solution that enables both technical and
non-technical users to effectively define, implement, monitor and streamline a
complete range of business rules and processes- including human-to-human,
system-to-human and system-to-system interactions.
   By empowering users to manage and execute business rules and processes,
CleverPath Aion r10 enables customers to operate more efficiently, optimize
the quality of business processes and improve governance controls.  It
supports the optimization of business processes with a broad spectrum of
associated capabilities -- including workflow, business rules automation,
customizable dashboards for business activity monitoring, business
intelligence and predictive analysis.
   CleverPath Aion r10 comprises two powerful and complementary solutions:
   -- CleverPath Aion Business Process Manager (CleverPath Aion BPM), a new
      solution delivering business process management, including business
      rules management and business activity monitoring for lines of business

   -- CleverPath Aion Business Rules Expert (CleverPath Aion BRE), combining
      the power of integrated business rules development with object-oriented
      and component-based deployment across multiple platforms.

.....

Business Rules Engine Evaluation
Gartner's Magic Quadrant stacks up vendors, brings attention to a technology that's gaining importance

by Demir Barlas, Line56

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

---

You may not have heard of a business rules engine (BRE), but it's a fair bet that you've heard about dynamic computing. Getting past the buzzwords, what the vendors are talking about is a way to automatically sense and response to certain business events; strategically, it's all about making better decisions faster, which is at the heart of all organizational success.

Recent research from Gartner looks at the vendors in the BRE marketplace. It's timely work precisely because BRE is so new, both technologically and conceptually. The very number of vendors who turned up in Gartner's vendor indicates an early-stage domain yet to pass through consolidation.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant groups vendors into leaders (high in execution ability and completeness of vision), challengers (better execution ability than completeness of vision), visionaries (who have completeness of vision but not great ability to execute), and niche players (low in both execution ability and vision). Here's how the BRE Magic Quadrant played out:

Leaders: Fair Isaac, Computer Associates, ILOG, Pegasystems, Gensysm, and Corticon.

Challengers: Microsoft, IB, Oracle, AMS, Unisys, Sybase, Magic, and Sapiens.

Visionaries: MindBox, Haley, Softlaw, RulesPower, ESI, Versata, Resolution EBS, Yasu, InRule, and Rippledown Solutions.

Niche Players: Logical Apps, Innovations, Ness, Exsys, ObjectStar, Idiom, AtHoc, and Elity.

Given that BRE is far from a monolithic technology, prospects would be well served to carefully examine all offerings, including those in the niche category.

Gartner explains why demand for BRE, which is growing at 10 percent, will ramp up further: "The phrase might be 'on demand' or 'just in time,' but there is a premium on agility for most business sectors today, and we only expect the demand for agility to increase during the next 10 years."

Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor for .NET Receives Microsoft Certification

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 17, 2005--

Leading Business Rules Management Software is Certified to Work with Microsoft Window's Client and Server as Well as Microsoft Managed Code

Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FIC), the leading provider of analytics and decision technology, today announced the certification of Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor for .NET, a robust rules management solution that extends the Microsoft .NET Framework. Microsoft's certification of Blaze Advisor for .NET builds upon Fair Isaac's relationship as a Microsoft Certified Partner and expands the enterprise reach of Fair Isaac's leading business rules management software.

Microsoft .NET is software that connects people, information, systems and devices through the use of Web services. Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor for .NET enables businesses to incorporate rules-based decisioning software that cooperates with and upgrades existing applications, regardless of platform or programming language. Companies can design, deploy, execute and maintain business rules and policies as part of an automated business strategy application designed to achieve rapid ROI without being restricted by current and future technology investments.

Microsoft's certification of Blaze Advisor for .NET ensures that Fair Isaac's powerful business rules management and execution technology is fully compatible with Windows clients, Windows servers, and .NET Managed Code.

......

Fair Isaac Positioned in Leaders Quadrant for Business Rules Engine in Independent Analyst Report

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 16, 2005--

Magic Quadrant Report Positions Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor in "Leaders" Quadrant Based on Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute

Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FIC), the leading provider of analytics and decision technology, today announced that it is again positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner, Inc. Magic Quadrant for Business Rules Engines(1). According to Gartner, "Leaders" are providers who are performing well today, have a clear vision of market direction and are actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.

Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor provides any business that makes large numbers of dynamic, high-impact operational decisions, with more complete capabilities for accelerating the development and deployment of decision management applications. It is designed to meet the most demanding individual workgroup applications, as well as serve the needs of large-scale national and multinational companies, who rely upon a variety of technology platforms and legacy systems using multiple programming languages.

With true cross-platform support ranging from COBOL to Java and Microsoft .NET, Fair Isaac Blaze Advisor is designed to meet the needs of companies seeking an open solution that helps them modernize their enterprise decision systems while they continue to leverage existing applications. Blaze Advisor is a key component of Fair Isaac's software and solutions for enterprise decision management (EDM), which combines data analytics, modeling and policy-level control to allow companies to define and manage their automated business systems for improved efficiency and greater profitability.

...

2005 'Magic Quadrant' Positions ILOG in the Leader Quadrant for Business Rule Engines
Wednesday February 16, 3:00 am ET

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. and PARIS, Feb. 16 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ILOG(R) (Nasdaq: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364) today announced that Gartner, Inc., a leading information technology research and advisory firm, has positioned the company in the Leader quadrant of its latest Magic Quadrant for Business Rule Engines* for the third consecutive year. ILOG maintained its leadership position in a larger, more competitive market environment.

"The number of rated vendors has increased by 15% [compared with last year], but the actual number has increased even more," wrote Gartner Vice President and Distinguished Analyst, Jim Sinur. The report also noted that "All indicators point to a growing market. Gartner refers to business rule engines as an "agility-focused' technology" alongside business process management, Web services and model-driven generators. "There is a premium on agility for most business sectors today, and we only expect the demand for agility to increase during the next 10 years," said Sinur in the report.

According to the report, Vendors in the Leaders quadrant are most likely to have high revenue in this market, high market share in terms of customers and products that are of interest to a wide audience.
.....

InRule Technology and Bluespring Software Form Strategic Alliance to Integrate Business Rules Engine (BRE) and Business Process Management (BPM) Technology

Developers and Business Users Empowered With Integrated Rules, Policies, and Processes

CHICAGO, IL -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 02/15/2005 -- InRule Technology, innovative provider of Business Rule Engine (BRE) technology for implementing and managing business rules, and Bluespring Software, the business process management (BPM) company that adds back-end execution to front-end applications, announced today a strategic alliance to integrate their technology. The partnership between InRule Technology and Bluespring Software addresses a growing need for technology that spans rules, policies, and processes across an enterprise.

Both technologies are built on a .NET platform. InRule and Bluespring offer best in class solutions that put technology in the hands of the business user. The combination targets larger enterprises, where business rules and business processes are often managed by different groups. Joint customers will gain complete management of their enterprise policies, rules and processes by the right subject matter experts in each field. Bluespring users gain additional flexibility and granularity in routing decision logic, advanced mapping and transformation operations, and sophisticated calculation and analytics capability. InRule users gain a process modeling capability with embedded rule authoring, a process-oriented runtime infrastructure to support rule evaluation, and a simplified authoring rollout with Bluespring's process management procedures.

....

Product Review: Computer Associates CleverPath Aion BPM

By Terry Schurter
BPM Today
February 15, 2005 3:47PM

The most powerful features of CleverPath Aion are its advanced business rules functions and predictive analysis capability. These functions are smart -- very smart. Business rules are automatically analyzed to determine the degree of accuracy they deliver regarding the correct operation of each business process.

.......

Business Rules Expert and Predictive Analysis Drive Value

The most powerful features of CleverPath Aion are its advanced business rules functions and predictive analysis capability. These functions are smart -- very smart. Business rules are automatically analyzed to determine the degree of accuracy they deliver regarding the correct operation of each business process.

A rule that is not performing its intended function, whether a normal-process rule or an exception handling rule, automatically is "discovered" by the system. Recommended action based on the business process design is presented to guide process designers directly to optimization and performance-tuning opportunities.

Changes in business-rule application and results are also monitored to provide early alerting of operational or process changes -- and to notify managers of the probability of process problems that are likely to affect process throughput or that will degrade system performance against key process metrics.

This capability is of particular benefit to large organizations where visibility into process details typically is lacking due to the complexity of the enterprise process model.

.........

Gensym Placed in Leader Quadrant by Prominent Analyst Firm; New Report Describes a Growing BRE Market BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 11, 2005--Gensym Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: GNSM), a leading provider of rule engine software for mission-critical solutions, today announced that Gartner, Inc., a leading research and advisory firm, has positioned Gensym in the leader quadrant in its new Magic Quadrant(TM) report for business rule engines (BREs).(a) Gartner defines vendors listed in the leader's quadrant as performing well today, having a clear vision of market direction, and actively building competencies to sustain their leadership position in the market.
Gensym is differentiated by its G2(R) rule engine technology, which for over 16 years has been proven for automating decisions in the most demanding real-time applications ranging from monitoring NASA's spacecraft operations to detecting and solving problems in global telecommunications networks to coordinating Toyota's automobile production in its worldwide facilities. Major users of G2 include ABB, BP, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Eli Lilly, El Paso, Ericsson, ExxonMobil, HP, Hitachi, JEA, Lafarge, Motorola, Nokia, Panama Canal, Siemens, the U.S. government, and many others.
According to Gartner, enterprises can realize many benefits by adopting business rule technology, including improved decision making, greater agility in responding to changing business conditions, and higher levels of customer satisfaction. Gartner expects continued growth of the BRE market.

"For many years Gensym and its partners have been quietly building rule engine solutions for the most challenging operations," said Kim Mayyasi, Gensym's president and CEO. "It is timely to receive a strong evaluation by Gartner as we more widely share our vision of business rules for mission-critical, real-time applications. We address one of the toughest challenges in rules processing - the ability to optimally process large numbers of transactions using complex decision logic in real time. G2 not only meets this challenge with scalability, but as business and operational conditions change, G2 enables agile responses by allowing users to easily make 'on-the-fly' updates to the decision logic. We believe that there is a growing need in the BRE market for these capabilities."
...........

ADAPTIVE PROCESS AUTOMATION:
CAN EFFICIENCY BE MARRIED TO FLEXIBILITY?
by Borys Stokalski, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium http://www.cutter.com/consultants/stokalskib.html
The Internet bubble emphasized growth and innovation as the main business imperatives. Recent years have valued cost-cutting and bottom-line expectations. Today, many organizations that have made it successfully through the years of economic downturn try to achieve growth while at the same time keeping the pressure on efficiency and cost awareness. As there are fewer and fewer companies that can be effectively merged or acquired, the most desired growth scenarios are those that are based on an innovative approach to markets or have innovative products and services.
One of the key enablers of innovation is organizational flexibility:
the capability to quickly change business policies and processes to accommodate new products or services. Here comes our question:
how can competitive levels of efficiency AND flexibility be achieved simultaneously?
The question is by no means theoretical. A good example comes from the international banking industry, implementing the regulations of the New Capital Accord (also called Basel II). Basel II enables banks, which implement extensive risk monitoring and reporting, to flexibly adjust the level of obligatory reserves to their actual risk exposure. Centralized risk management typically is approached by tedious work on business process analysis, followed by implementation of software solutions that automate various aspects of risk monitoring and management. But in a competitive market, centrally monitored and automated processes may become a rigid, bureaucratic "corset."
New products and services have to be introduced quickly, and customer-facing employees must not be reduced to the level of a "human interface" to a "corporate engine," processing customer needs on a virtual "information factory belt."
It seems that in the area of process management there is a need for a breakthrough that would be an equivalent to agile software development and project management -- the rise of new approaches in software project management, triggered by rising levels of change and growing complexity of IT projects. A manifesto for Agile business processes, based on the articles of the Agile Manifesto
(http://www.agilemanifesto.org/) could be defined as follows:
We need to uncover a better way of designing and implementing
efficient business processes. Our goal is best achieved by doing
it and helping others do it. In this work we value:
* People, skills, and competencies over process roles and chain
of command.
* Working processes over automated workflow.
* Getting things done for customers over executing procedures.
* Following customer needs over following formal policies.
The "better way" is by no means a ready-made solution. The main challenges in adopting agile processes lie -- as in agile project management -- in the established ways of thinking, "chain-of- command" mentality, and a common belief that routine, risk avoidance, and obedience have more business value than creativity, opportunity taking, and responsibility.
While these obstacles cannot be overcome by technology, it is worth noting that there are a number of technologies and approaches that can be useful as a technological platform for companies that seek tools to support their quest for agility. Such an adaptive process automation platform has a number of potentially useful components:
1. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) -- implementing architecture
patterns and standards of SOA is a fundamental approach for
delivering building blocks for adaptive process automation.
2. Business rule engines -- specialized middleware and management
tools that can help an organization define its processes as a set of
interrelated rules, expressed in business terms, and integrated
with enterprise services portfolio, rather than as prescribed and
rigid workflow.
3. Business process management solutions -- specialized middleware
and management tools that can help an organization to quickly
assemble services implemented in its enterprise services portfolio
into an automated process and orchestrate its execution. Such
tools pave the way to the prototyping of business processes in
a way similar to application prototyping.
Other technologies that can be considered an important support for agile processes are e-learning platforms, supporting the redeployment of new or changed business process across the organization, and business intelligence solutions that help monitor and compare the efficiency metrics of business process and rule sets.
It is only natural that principles underlying agile project management are mapped onto the domain of business processes that has so far been considered routine, repeatable, and risk averse. Otherwise the innovative results of agile projects may not make it on time for successful implementation.
-- Borys Stokalski, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium http://www.cutter.com/consultants/stokalskib.html

(c) 2005 Cutter Consortium. All rights reserved.

RulesPower Founder Forms New Venture to Provide Repeatable Applications on Top of RulesPower Platform
BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 8, 2005--

LogicManager, Inc to Embed and Resell RulesPower Rules-Driven BPM Technology in Packaged Software Product; Move Validates Success of RulesPower

RulesPower Inc., the leading provider of rules-driven Business Process Management (BPM) software, today announced the formation of a new venture by RulesPower founder, Steven Minsky. The new company, LogicManager, Inc., will be a leading provider of repeatable business logic model-driven software applications. LogicManager will deliver these solutions to customers through a packaged software product that embeds the RulesPower rules-driven Business Process Management Suite. As part of this move, Minsky will remain on RulesPower's board of advisors.
The formation of LogicManager is a validation of the success of RulesPower's innovative technology. RulesPower allows business analysts to create a business logic layer by modeling, analyzing and validating the tasks, policies and decisions that drive business, during the early stages of process design.
......

.......................
The Business Rules Community's
Business Rules Journal (BRJ) Update
February, 2005 Vol 6 No. 2
.......................
~~~ Business Rules Awareness Survey ~~~
Please take just a few minutes to complete our important Survey!
http://www.brcommunity.com/survey/index.php?sid=3
For you in return ...
* Download for FREE the valuable results of an unpublished 2004
survey of business rule professionals.
* Enter your name to win a FREE registration for one of the
following:
- European Business Rule Conference in June, in Amsterdam.
- Business Rules Forum Conference in November, in Orlando.
Refer to the Survey for additional details ...
.......................
~~~ New for 2005, for Members of BRCommunity Only ~~~
**DISCOUNTS on Professional Conferences and Seminars**
Available discounts will also appear at the bottom of each future Update.
.......................
In this issue of your periodic Business Rules Journal Update...
1. Enterprise Transformation ~ Lessons from Julius Caesar, by
Daniel S. Appleton
2. Premise & Conclusion: Can You Violate Structural Rules?
(Part 1) ~ The Difference Between Violations and Bad
Decisions, by Ronald G. Ross
3. Foundation Matters: Nothing to Worry About ~ A Parable,
by C. J. Date
4. OMG Reporter: OMG Business Rules Proposal Nears Completion,
by Stan Hendryx
5. "Oldies-but-Goodies" posting, by Ronald G. Ross
If you'd like to read all our articles on the web, visit:
http://www.brcommunity.com

1. Enterprise Transformation ~ Lessons from Julius Caesar, by
Daniel S. Appleton
...............................................................
There are many differing opinions and views on 'enterprise transformation.' There are new schools of thought and old schools of thought. The objective of Dan Appleton's 'McCafferty Chronicles' is to present and justapose those wide-ranging views in a realistic setting … and with some humor. In this month's segment, McCafferty has his team ponder things they might learn
from one of the very old schools.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2005/b220.html

2. Premise & Conclusion: Can You Violate Structural Rules?
(Part 1) ~ The Difference Between Violations and Bad Decisions,
by Ronald G. Ross
...............................................................
Can a decision made on the basis of inadequate rules formally Result in a violation? Are inference rules capable of producing violations in the same sense as other rules? Should definitions provide criteria that can be violated per se? In this month's column (first of a three-part series), Ron Ross examines two fundamental kinds of business rules, and what happens if they are broken or applied inappropriately.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2005/b221.html

3. Foundation Matters: Nothing to Worry About ~ A Parable,
by C. J. Date
...............................................................
C. J. Date is a database specialist who believes that nulls should indeed be left alone and never used. He can prove conclusively, with a little lifting and logic, that they can lead to disastrous errors. Thus, he thinks it's incumbent on anyone who thinks they're a good idea to prove equally conclusively that their own use of them cannot. In this month's column, he shares a parable.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2005/b224.html

4. OMG Reporter: OMG Business Rules Proposal Nears Completion,
by Stan Hendryx
...............................................................
In this month's column, Stan Hendryx reports the significant news that the proposal of the Business Rules Team (BRT) for the OMG's Business Semantics of Business Rules is nearing completion. After over 18 months of gestation the BRT submitted their revised submission on January 10, preparatory to its presentation at the technical meeting of the OMG in Burlingame, California, last week.
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a2005/b226.html

5. "Oldies-but-Goodies" Collection
..................................................................
BRS is releasing hidden treasures from past print issues of the Data Base Newsletter and DataToKnowledge Newsletter. This month's contribution to our "Oldies-but-Goodies" collection is...
"The Next Great Leap Forward ~ About the Changes You See"
by Ronald G. Ross
from the May/Jun. 1998 issue
to read more, visit:
http://www.BRCommunity.com/a1998/a509.html

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Membership has its privileges ...
**DISCOUNTS ON PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCES & SEMINARS**
BRCommunity has partnered with the following conferences and seminars to provide our members with special discounts! Sign-in to www.BRCommunity.com to obtain the special Discount Codes.
== Semantic Technology Conference ==
..............................................................
March 7-10, 2005
Stanford Court Hotel, Nob Hill
San Francisco, CA
Special Discount for BRCommunity Members: $100.
Sign-in to www.BRCommunity.com to obtain the special Discount Code.
The first in-depth educational program focused on the emerging Semantic Technologies including Taxonomies and Ontologies, Semantic Modeling, Integration, Semantic Brokers, Web Services, Business Vocabularies, Knowledge Representation, Business Rules and the Semantic Web.
Featured speakers include Eric Miller (W3C), Peter Norvig (Google), Doug Lenat (Cycorp) and Jim Hendler ("father" of the Semantic Web).
Chair: Dave McComb, author of "Semantics in Business Systems".
Sponsored by: Whilshire Conferences
Visit: www.semantic-conference.com
== Business Rule and Business Process Seminars and Workshops == ...............................................................
2-3 Day Seminars, April 4 - 8, 2005
DoubleTree Hotel, Crystal City
Washington , DC
Special Discount for BRCommunity Members: $100.
Sign-in to www.BRCommunity.com to obtain the special Discount Code.
The longest running seminars on Business Rules and Business Processes in the world by the pioneers in these fields.
* Business Rules Workshops by Ronald G. Ross and Gladys S.W. Lam ...
explain what Business Rules are and present a pragmatic Business Rule Approach to ensure success in conducting business analysis.
* Business Process Workshops by Roger T. Burlton and Kathy A. Long ...
provide a comprehensive framework for transforming and managing the Business Processes of your organization.
Sponsored by: AttainingEdge
Visit: http://www.AttainingEdge.com or call 866-347-5051
== DAMA International Symposium and Wilshire Meta-Data Conference == ..................................................................
Orlando, May 22-26, 2005
Special Discount for BRCommunity Members: $50.00 Sign-in to www.BRCommunity.com to obtain the special Discount Code.
The world's largest vendor-neutral data management conference will attract 1000 attendees from around the world. Educational topics include metadata management, business rules, data quality, data modeling, compliance and governance, enterprise architectures, semantic technologies and unstructured data management. Keynotes include the father of data warehousing, Bill Inmon, and CNN Analyst Bruce Weinstein discussing Ethics in Data. The agenda includes 20 workshops and tutorials, and over 80 conference sessions, case studies and special interest meetings.
Sponsored by: Whilshire Conferences
Visit: http://www.WilshireConferences.com
== Business Rules Forum Conference ==
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November 6-10, 2005
Hilton at the Walt Disney World Resort
Orlando, FL
Special Discount for BRCommunity Members: $100.
Sign-in to www.BRCommunity.com to obtain the special Discount Code.
The Business Rules Forum Conference is where you and your management can find out more about what's happening in Business Rules, straight from practitioners and business people themselves.
Companies from many diverse industries share their experiences.
Hear why so many companies are turning to the Business Rules Approach. You'll come away with a host of practical ideas you can put to immediate use for your company.
Also, for Executives and Managers: A SPECIAL 1-DAY EXECUTIVE FORUM (Offered concurrently).
Co-Chairs: Ronald G. Ross & Terry Moriarty
Visit: www.BusinessRulesForum.com

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How to stay in touch with Business Rules ...
**ABOUT THE BUSINESS RULES JOURNAL UPDATE**
The Business Rules Journal (BRJ) Update is distributed electronically free-of-charge on a monthly basis by the Business Rules Community.
www.BRCommunity.com
Gladys S. W. Lam, Publisher
Ronald G. Ross, Executive Editor
Keri Anderson Healy, Editor
John Hall, Technology Editor
Silvie Spreeuwenberg, European Section Editor
BRCommunity.com is sponsored by Business Rule Solutions, LLC, the world leader in business rule techniques.
Copyright 2005. www.BRSolutions.com. All rights reserved.

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Rule Engines, 2005
8 February 2005
Jim Sinur
Source: GartnerNote Number: G00125811
Business rule engines have momentum, and vendors in this sector continue to innovate. During the next two years, as this crowded market matures and more suite vendors include BREs in their offerings, expect a wave of sell-offs and failures.
..............
full report

Haley Systems Provides Business Agility for Automated Decision Making
Monday
February 7, 9:05 am ET
Industry Analyst Report Highlights Natural Language Benefits of Haley's Business Rules Management System
PITTSBURGH, Feb. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Haley Systems, a technology provider of business rules management systems, today announced the availability of a report featuring Haley Systems authored by global intelligence and advisory firm, IDC (December 2004, IDC Report #32597). The report, written by IDC Software Research Group program vice president Steve McClure, states that businesses seeking a competitive advantage and agility through automated decision-making are best served by business rules management systems (BRMS) that enable business analysts to directly capture and manage the rules, without significant reliance on IT programmers. The report is available for download at http://www.haley.com.

......see full press release

By ADT Staff

Christopher L. Matthieu, director eBusiness technologies at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona (BCBSAZ), was looking for a way to take IT out of the process of making business rules changes to end user applications.

Why couldn’t underwriters make changes to the health insurance company’s rate compensation system without having to call in a programmer?

What Matthieu found was Centrifuge, business rules management software with patent-pending technology designed to make business rules "understandable and maintainable for the business analyst," according to the vendor, Resolution EBS, Inc.

As Matthieu explains, Centrifuge gives end users an Excel-like tool for maintaining business rules without if/then/else type programming. Using it, BCBSAZ underwriters and actuaries are "pretty much self-sufficient" when it comes to maintaining the rules for the system they use every day, he says.
.......

for full article

ILOG : COMMERZBANK SELECTS ILOG JRULES TO DRIVE NEXT GENERATION CREDIT RATING SYSTEM
(2/2/2005 7:00:00 AM)

FRANKFURT – February 2, 2005 - ILOG® (NASDAQ: ILOG; Euronext: ILO, ISIN: FR0004042364), a leading provider of enterprise-class software components and services, today announced that Commerzbank AG, one of Germany's and Europe's leading private sector banks, has chosen ILOG JRules™, a key offering in ILOG's Business Rule Management System (BRMS) product line, to create a flexible new IT architecture for the development and deployment of Basel II-compliant rating applications. Commerzbank will be using ILOG's recently announced JRules 5.0, and expects this newest version to improve collaboration between IT staff and rating business experts, resulting in productivity gains.

In addition to meeting Basel II compliance mandates for its credit rating system by 2005, Commerzbank views the enhancement of their credit rating system a key element of its customer acquisition strategy. The JRules-based system will automate the highly-complex customer rating process involving hundreds of unique and constantly changing rules that determine the credit-worthiness of Commerzbank's commercial and private bank customers, allowing the bank to accommodate changes that assure business agility to the process without a major overhaul of the IT infrastructure.

...for more details

Summary
The concept of a service-oriented architecture is a powerful tool for simplifying enterprise integration. Following the three principles of modularity, encapsulation and loose coupling will achieve some amount of improvement for an individual service. It is insufficient to have a loose set of principles to guide enterprise architecture designs.

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Separate rules. It is important to categorize business logic/rules, further, into "process" type business rules versus "UI" type business rules. Process-type business rules are good candidates to encompass within business services and UI-level business rules should be separated out.
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Technology And Underwriting Optimization

Insurers must develop new strategies and deploy technologies to automate and manage the underwriting process.

By Kimberly Harris
Kimberly Harris is a vice president and director of insurance research for Gartner Inc., Stamford, Conn.

February 1, 2005 - Challenging market conditions, led by accelerating price competition, are causing insurers to look more closely at streamlining their underwriting procedures to defend or improve their profitability. Inevitably, this is creating a new focus by senior executives on data, technology and process management.
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Management of business rules and decision support. It is imperative that insurers reduce the amount of manual underwriting that takes place. Underwriting business rules should be documented and managed. A rules repository can then be used to filter incoming cases to automate the decision completely or provide a decision recommendation.

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for more details