Good to see the leaders in the space looking into this evolution

Your point hits the nail squarely on the head – “We are trying to make process improvement accessible to EVERYONE in a company” – this should be the goal of everyone involved in the BPM community. Previous tools and methodologies have failed due to their focus on one specific group of stakeholders at the expense of others. BPM cannot afford to make the same mistake and now has an opportunity to change the trend – if we do it right. The success of ‘innovation from the shop floor’ in other process improvement methodologies (most notably Kaizen) should be a tempting goal for all of us.

But, for this to happen the tools need to be easy to access (hence cloud), easy to use (no prior training required) and people should be easy to find and connect to based on their interests and expertise (hence the need for social networking capabilities).

IBM has hit the first of these (the easy one!), missed the second completely (simplicity isn’t in their business model) and has made passing reference to ’social networking’ (we will see how that is implemented but my guess would be a miss here too).

Come on, take sides – its more fun that way. Seriously, I definitely appreciate that you are a Blueprint user and advocate. Our contention is that simplifying access to the complex tools of BPA does little to move the needle towards creating a culture of BPM in an enterprise. Its complexity in the cloud for the few who understand it. Still does not sound like democracy to me. We will see what IBM delivers, but its focus is clearly different than Blueprint.

On the Blueprint side – one important thing. We are not trying to democratize the “process improvement project team space”. We are trying to make process improvement accessible to EVERYONE in a company – whether you are a seasoned business analyst and BPMN modeler or a person working every day in a call center with some ideas about how to better handle the claims process. That is where we are going and the next step in Blueprint’s evolution happens on Saturday – so be sure to tune back in.

Great minds think alike ;-) We are going to do a scaled down form of the Science Fair at Driven this year. We will be putting out a call to customers and partners shortly to see if anyone wants to submit some of their innovations for judging alongside the Lombardi ones.

A chicken running around after it’s head has been cut off is expending energy (Joules) which is work by definition.

Read your post and it hits on a theme that we’ve noticed as well. When people are purists (all six-sigma, no lean, or all lean, no six-sigma, or whatever “M” methodology they choose), the question I ask is: what is the value that your purism/dogma achieves for your organization? or for your customer(s)? If the goal is to achieve value, then purism only matters if it enhances value (or if the lack thereof detracts from value). After all, there is no mutual exclusivity about applying lean techniques versus six-sigma techniques…!

Finally, your last point on BPM. Here you have hit the nail upon the head. BPM provides the software foundation for the ongoing M and C in DMAIC – it isn’t, in my opinion, about the initial measurement – sampling techniques and discipline may get you measurement and control in the short run – its about collecting measurements for years, and applying controls for years, into the future. I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason organizations pursue a methodology as if it were a religion is to compensate for the lack of system-software support in their organizations. (It may have been a really logical course of action before good BPM software hit the market as well).

I know for our own organization, we see our ability to apply the techniques of lean and six-sigma, while backing those techniques with BPM software, as differentiated advantage in our market. Again, you’ll see software folks who put no value in the improvement methodologies, and you’ll see methodology fans who see no value in software (or see it as a distraction from improving the process).

Scott

:-)

While there are people who talk about “internal clouds” and consider it part of cloud computing I would only consider your first scenario above (vendor sold/managed and usage-based pricing) cloud computing. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t compelling cases for bringing certain characteristics of the cloud in house I just wouldn’t consider this model cloud computing.

To me the defining benefits of cloud computing are near immediate time-to-service, low barrier to entry/exit and flexibility. When someone else owns and manages the elements of the cloud there is no large outlay of capital to get started (or dispose of) and you the end-user have the flexibility and immediacy of adding or dropping the service much the same way you can get or drop phone service at your house.

By hosting in house you may gain some in security and control but lose the elements that, in my opinion, make cloud computing, cloud computing.

Thanks,

Barton

I like the definition, generally, but am wondering about the phrase “from a source you don’t own or manage.” This would seem to preclude the notion of a company hosting its own cloud. Do you mean then that a “cloud” could never be owned by the company using that clouds services?

Certainly, the technologies of the cloud can be deployed internally, I think we could all agree on that. But this notion of whether something IS cloud computing is different, based on your definition.

Let me throw a different scenario at you.

Imagine a day when robust, performant application development can be done by end users. Further, imagine that the enabling reason for this is some very robust infrastructure… something like the telephone network except that it’s a platform for application development. But it’s hardened and scalable like never before. And because of this, end users can build their own process applications. The platform is also connected directly to a company’s legacy systems, the systems of record that “run the company,” and that therefore the company wants to own and manage the application development platform.

And finally, assume that the application developer accesses this process application development platform exactly as they would access something from “the cloud.” Services are exposed and re-used at will, data is segmented, and performance is determined using, essentially, late-binding (that is, the platforms dynamically scales at run-time).

So two questions:

Would this be cloud computing if it were sold by a vendor, priced based on usage, and managed by the vendor?

Would this be cloud computing if it were owned and managed by the end user entity itself?

Cheers,
Phil

Thanks for the compliment! ;) Right now what you see above is only available in Blueprint. We do have some exciting things happening in Teamworks that we’ll be showing in the next few months, so stay tuned!

Dave