We will be in Echelon 2011!!

Echelon 2011 will be the biggest ever edition
of Asia’s best startup launchpad event. It will 
discover Southeast Asia’s best start-ups on 
an all new scale.
A series of Satellite launchpads across Southeast Asia will uncover a broader range of regional start-ups and filter them to create a higher-quality main event in Singapore. Echelon 2011 will be a two-day, double-track event that happens in Singapore in June with an expected attendance of more than 1,000 delegates; a demo pit of more than 40 start-ups and companies; and workshops and fringe events.




Sorry for the hard sell, but we will be in Echelon 2011 from 16-17 June. We are listed as one of exhibitors there. We will be in Booth #28 and there will be free mysterious gifts. Limited stocks only.  

The State of Cloud Computing

An entertaining video of the clouds from Salesforce. Cloud computing is everywhere but there are more possiblities than just emails or video. Enterprise software are the next major frontier for cloud computing. Think of Salesforce.com. Or even Office 365. Enterprise market are much more larger and lucrative market for cloud computing.So what do you think of cloud computing in enterprise market? :-D

What is Workflow Patterns?

Today, I found out about workflow patterns which are done by initiative is a joint effort of Eindhoven University of Technology (led by Professor Wil van der Aalst) and Queensland University of Technology (led by Professor Arthur ter Hofstede) which started in 1999. These patterns which has grown from 20 to 40, has been adopted by major BPM players such as IBM, oracle and others BPM vendors. They also responsible for the creation of YAWL which a language and workflow engine, implemented in java.

According to the site, there are four major type of workflow patterns:

1. Control-flow pattern – (captures aspects related to control-flow dependencies between various tasks (e.g. parallelism, choice, synchronization etc) 
2. Data pattern - deals with the passing of information , scoping of variables, etc (more for programming purposes) 
3. Resource pattern - deals with resource to task allocation, delegation, etc. 
4. Error handling pattern - deal with the various causes of exceptions and the various actions that need to be taken as a result of exceptions occurring 

And what are we doing for our workflow software are very much related on resource pattern. Our Hydra workflow are very much specialized in resource pattern workflow as we deals with delegation of task, and routing of workitems (a term we use in our workflow system to denotes workflow process). Apparently there are tons of ways to describe these human centric workflow. Among these are :

a. Creation Patterns:

• Direct Distribution
• Role-Based Distribution
• Deferred Distribution
• Authorization
• Separation of Duties
• Case Handling
• Retain Familiar
• Capability-Based Distribution
• History-Based Distribution
• Organisational Distribution
• Automatic Execution

b. Push Patterns

• Distribution by Offer - Single Resource
• Distribution by Offer - Multiple Resources
• Distribution by Allocation - Single Resource
• Random Allocation
• Round Robin Allocation
• Shortest Queue
• Early Distribution
• Distribution on Enablement
• Late Distribution

c. Pull Patterns

• Resource-Initiated Allocation
• Resource-Initiated Execution - Allocated Work Item
• Resource-Initiated Execution - Offered Work Item
• System-Determined Work Queue Content
• Resource-Determined Work Queue Content
• Selection Autonomy

d. Detour Patterns

• Delegation
• Escalation
• Deallocation
• Stateful Reallocation
• Stateless Reallocation
• Suspension-Resumption
• Skip
• Redo
• Pre-Do

e. Auto-Start Patterns

• Commencement on Creation
• Commencement on Allocation
• Piled Execution
• Chained Execution

f. Visibility Patterns

• Configurable Unallocated Work Item Visibility
• Configurable Allocated Work Item Visibility

g. Multiple Resource Patterns

• Simultaneous Execution
• Additional Resources

These are sure a long, long list of type of workflow patterns (43 items here). Well, I'm still at the process reading and understanding these patterns. Maybe in next coming article, i might come out on how to implement some these in our workflow system. Maybe we can't support all of it now but i believe a great percentage of them are achievable. 

So what you think of resource pattern workflow? And will this helps in real organization in terms helping organization dealing with process everyday? Do give us feedback on this. Till then, take care!

Business Process Management Meets Enterprise 2 0 (Slide)

Couple days ago, i stumble upon an article about collaborative BPM  which i found quite interesting. From that article i found this slides which did by Sandy Kemsley.

It certainly interesting article that mention how BPM vendors starts to incorporate social features into their product and how this would appeal to the newer generations of users. I wonder application like facebook and twitter changes behaviour of system users. Does they demand such features because they are exposed to these or those feature s enables to have more empowerment in their work? Do let me know what you think?

And yes, do enjoy the slides. :-D

Business Process Management Meets Enterprise 2 0

Next Generation LOB (Line of Business) Applications Slides

Found another slides on LOB (Line of Business) application and it's next generation of evolutions using Microsoft technologies. There's quite a short and concise overview on which technology to solve or new way of doing things in an LOB application.

Very interesting presentation and we are using some of it but not in the entirety which we can look forward to.

So what you think of these technologies developed by Microsoft? Are there better way of doing this? :-D

Next Generation LOB (Line of Business) Applications

Patterns For Cloud Computing Slides From Microsoft

Today, I found this presentation from aadjemonkeyrock (a blog which i follows). The title certainly intrigues me at first as we are very much into cloud computing. But beware, it's a pretty long presentation with over 180 pages but most are pictures not words.

This presentation I find quite interesting as it does explained what is cloud computing from Microsoft point of view. And Azure is the solutions for Microsoft technology adopter such like us. Certainly certain patterns are quite interesting such as concept of multi tenancy. It's also ironic that Google is mentioned on the presentation on the topic of MapReduce  and how this can be solve via Azure platform. Overall it's interesting presentation on the cloud computing roadmap from Microsoft.

But i think there are more plenty patterns implemented by other vendors. So what do you think on cloud computing patterns or roadmap? You can leave your comment here. :-D

Patterns For Cloud Computing

Happy Chinese New Year!!

Health makes all things possible,
Wealth makes all things work
Love makes all things beautiful.
May you all have all 3.

We would like to wish all of you a happy chinese new year!! Gong Xi Fatt Chai from all of us in Unispace!