Model-driven business process integration and management: A case study with the Bank SinoPac regional service platform

IBM Journal of Research and Development, Sep-Nov 2004 by Zhu, J, Tian, Z, Li, T, Sun, W, Et al

Business process integration and management (BPIM) is a critical element in enterprise business transformation. Small and medium-sized businesses have their own requirements for BPIM solutions: The engagement methodology should be fast and efficient; a reusable and robust framework is required to reduce cost; and the whole platform should be lightweight so that one can easily revise, develop, and execute solutions. We believe that model-driven technologies are the key to solving all of the challenges mentioned above. Model Blue, a set of model-driven business integration and management methods, frameworks, supporting tools, and a runtime environment, was developed by the IBM China Research Laboratory (CRL) in Beijing to study the efficacy of model-driven BPIM. To verify the technology and methodology, Model Blue was deployed with Bank SinoPac, a mid-sized bank headquartered in Taiwan. A lightweight BPIM solution platform was delivered for Bank SinoPac to design, develop, and deploy its business logic and processes. During the eight-month life span of the project, IBM teams developed four-major solutions for Bank SinoPac, which also developed one solution independently. In spite of the remote working environment and the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome illness, the project was completed successfully on schedule and within budget, with up to 30% efficiency improvement compared with similar projects. Bank SinoPac was satisfied with the technology and methodology, and awarded IBM other projects. In this paper, we illustrate how each key business process integration and solution development phase was carried out and guided by business process modeling, together with major experiences gained. The following technical aspects are discussed in detail: a two-dimensional business process modeling view to integrate flow modeling and data modeling; a lightweight processing logic automation environment with tooling support; and the end-to-end BPIM methodology, with models and documents successfully integrated as part of (or replacement for) the deliverables defined in the existing servicing methodologies and software engineering approaches.

1. Model-driven business integration

Business Process Integration and Management (BPIM) is important for transforming today's business enterprises. Enterprises require end-to-end solutions in order to effectively link internal and external business applications, systems, and staff so that they can respond with flexibility and speed to changing business conditions. The technologies for business integration have evolved over the last twenty years.

Most early integration solutions were focused on connecting systems. Vendors have provided various Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) adapters (e.g., iWay [1]) to help create linkages among different applications (e.g., SAP**, SQL Server, and DB2*). Such solutions tend to establish relationships among systems in an ad hoc point-to-point manner. This is illustrated in Figure 1 with applications in a typical bank as an example. Usually it leads to a complex interaction network among systems and business units and results in problems in areas such as performance, maintenance, lack of scalability and extensibility, and stability.

The concept of an integration hub (also shown in Figure 1) has been widely adopted by today's leading business application integration solutions, such as IBM WebSphere* Business Integration (WBI) [2], Microsoft BizTalk Server** [3], and BEA Weblogic** Integrator [4]. These solutions connect different systems through a centralized integration engine or hub, where the integration logic resides and executes. As a result, the creation, maintenance, and changing of integration logic can be managed in a more flexible and efficient way.

The most challenging part that remains unsolved, however, is how to plan, build, maintain, and utilize the integration hub for real business cases. Many solutions are still focused on the information technology (IT) aspects of system integration, which, it is asserted, is becoming the commodity portion of enterprise integration solutions [5]. Historically, there have been attempts and practices to improve enterprise businesses through IT advances, but according to [6], these have not proven to be very successful. The differentiation of today's business integration solutions is elevated to the design and analysis of high-level business strategy and processes, and the way in which IT systems can be refined or created to support them. From this perspective, an integration hub is insufficient. In fact, an integration platform is required to guide the end-to-end solution lifecycle. Such a solution lifecycle typically includes phases such as requirement collection, macro and micro design, implementation, test, and deployment.

Model-driven business integration (MDBI) is an emerging approach for building such an integration platform. The distinctive feature of this approach is that models are employed as the key elements to drive the end-to-end integration solutions from business requirements down to IT implementation. For each major phase of a solution lifecycle, guidelines are given to specify the input models, output models, and model operations (e.g., creation, transformation, and modification). According to the layered modeling concept in Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) [7], the separation of business logic from IT technology can be achieved by using separate models at the computation-independent model (CIM) layer, the platform-independent model (PIM) layer, and the platform-specific model (PSM) layer. Model transformations among layers will help to fill the so-called business-IT gap.