FW: Update on brochure and ASG Whitepaper

Brochure Outline

Why BCM - The Business Challenge to Business Interoperability

Because of pressure to yield short-term results, many integration efforts have focused on essential tactical objectives such as creating the plumbing to connect one application with another. Such efforts have often run into unexpected obstacles such as the resistance of key parties to adopt common modes of business interaction. The BCM approach aims to provide a framework that properly balances tactical programs with a broader business-centric view.

Obstacles to realizing business integration or interoperability

Business / technology alignment

Aligning priorities and attention among multiple business units

Need for visibility and ease of negotiation between business entities

Need for managing business/technology relationships among communities with differing business vocabularies. (need to gain semantic interoperability).

Lack of common business vocabulary

New technologies create the possibility of dramatic new ways of doing business. Those possibilities will not be realized without a deliberate process for connecting business and technology integration strategies among multiple business partners.

Implementing interoperability is all about making choice, some of which promote business alignment and some of which do not. Agility in the business depends on more than the pipes that connect systems. It depends on being able to make mutually beneficial choices with speed, certitude, and consistency.

Standards are a means not the end.

What is BCM

New technologies like web services and interoperability standards offer new promise to integrate information systems and business processes. BCM creates the means to align business and technical strategies within and across enterprises.

graphic showing intersection of

Business integration

Interoperable Technology

Information

Meta data mgt.

Knowledge mgt.

People

Change management

BCM builds on a long tradition of efforts to integrate business strategies and needs with management of the changing information technology infrastructure.

BCM layered architecture and common semantic foundation

Benefits of BCM

Speed of response to business change

Extended scope of business service implementation

Managed risk

Formal mechanism for communicating with collaboration partners

Reuse of knowledge, people, capital assets across business units and processes

Reduced cost through elimination of redundant assets, business processes

Visibility of business processes and associated assets

Integration of performance management views with change management and capital planning

Leverage knowledge

Reduced complexity

Prioritized investment in relation to business impact

Who should use BCM

Organizations which aim to implement a consistent enterprise architecture

Organizations that need a consistent means to form communities of interest in the extended enterprise

Organizations that aim to implement effective business integration strategies within or across enterprise boundaries.

How to use BCM

BCM puts a premium on ease of use and clarity of communication.

BCM is an evolving framework to which the communities of interest will contribute.

Refs to specs / other resources

bcm message