A Cloud-driven View on Business Process as a Service (original) (raw)

Towards a Framework for Defining and Categorising Business Process-As-A-Service (BPaaS)

This paper studies a fourth emerging service model of cloud computing, Business Process as a Service (BPaaS). BPaaS is generating hype but it is under researched with a lack of clarity regarding how BPaaS differentiates itself from other service models and what opportunities and challenges it presents for management and organisations attempting to implement it. In this paper we examine the theoretical underpinnings of BPaaS with a view to developing an understanding of the potential value of adopting the BPaaS model and its implications for the realisation of business value from cloud computing. We develop the SEIFS framework (Situation, Elemental, Integration, Flexibility, and Scalability) to provide guidance in the classification of cloud services as BPaaS or otherwise and attempt to validate this framework by using a series of case studies based in Irish cloud computing firms. Our paper aims to contribute to the literature by addressing confusion in the classification of cloud services, and specifically BPaaS. We also provide insights for prospective BPaaS providers to factor into their service design and discuss how BPaaS can provide a competitive advantage. Finally, we identify and discuss a number of areas for future research.

Cloud Based Business Processes Orchestration

Procedia Economics and Finance, 2014

As the value concept of the cloud is evolving from a cost-saving mechanism into a growth instrument, more and more organizations are turning to the cloudinanattempt to redesign their core business processes.Theopportunity for process innovation is vast, and it will take the disciplined approachofBPM, with the computing understanding and accessibility of the cloud, tomake the most of what lies ahead. With the popularityo fc l oud computing, Platform-as-a Service (PaaS) becomes oneo ft h ec o r e technical enablers of enterprises to change the delivery of services to both customers and internal organizations. An application in an enterprise needs to take into accountv a riouss p ecific requirements for hosting in private and hybridc l o u d ,w ith unique requirements on rapid development, simplicity for deployment and management, integration withexisting solution and compliance to industrystandards.

From Business Process to Cloud Application

2020

Business Process (BP) development can be defined as the process of constructing a workflow application by composing a set of services performing BP's activities. In this respect, Cloud Services (CSs) are being increasingly used in BP development to ensure a high level of performance with a low operating cost. Although large companies may benefit from CSs' advantages, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and startups are falling behind in cloud usage due to missing Information Technology competence, (IT-competence). The crucial challenge facing SMEs and startups in cloud-based BP development is to effectively address the so-called business and IT alignment issue. It represents the alignment between two different domains; one that entails technical cloud resource requirements and another comprising business-level. Formerly, we present this issue as a discovery challenge of suitable CSs performing abstract BP's activities. To address this challenge, firstly, we introdu...

Developing cloud-based Business Process Management (BPM): a survey

Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2018

In today's highly competitive business environment, modern enterprises are dealing difficulties to cut unnecessary costs, eliminate wastes and delivery huge benefits for the organization. Companies are increasingly turning to a more flexible IT environment to help them realize this goal. For this reason, the article applies cloud based Business Process Management (BPM) that enables to focus on modeling, monitoring and process management. Cloud based BPM consists of business processes, business information and IT resources, which help build real-time intelligence systems, based on business management and cloud technology. Cloud computing is a paradigm that involves procuring dynamically measurable resources over the internet as an IT resource service. Cloud based BPM service enables to address common problems faced by traditional BPM, especially in promoting flexibility, event-driven business process to exploit opportunities in the marketplace.

Towards Business Process Catalog for Cloud-Enabled Service Oriented Architectures

2016

Advances in cloud-enabled service-oriented architectures (SOA) have caused a resurgence of industry interest in business process catalog as a vehicle for establishing shared references for collaborative business processes. With this paper, we start to explore the state of art and practice in business process catalog and classification scheme (BPCCS) development and use for the manufacturing industry. More specifically, this paper includes two major contributions. First, we identify a set of initial requirements for BPCCS. Second, we provide a use-case analysis based on the identified requirements. We end by comparing our BPCCS requirements with those being developed across other, BPCCS R&D groups.

“BPELanon” - Protect Business Processes on the Cloud

2015

The advent of Cloud computing supports the offering of many Business Process Management applications on a distributed, per-use basis environment through its infrastructure. Due to the fact that privacy is still an open issue in the Cloud, many companies are reluctant to move their Business Processes on a public Cloud. Since the Cloud environment can be beneficiary for the Business Processes, the investigation of privacy issues needs to be further examined. In order to enforce the Business Process sharing on the Cloud we propose a methodology ("BPELanon") for the anonymization of Business Processes expressed in the Web Service Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). The method transforms a process to preserve its original structure and run-time behavior, while completely anonymizing its business semantics. In this work we set the theoretical framework of the method and define a five management layers architecture to support its realization. We developed a tool that implements the "BPELanon" method, validate its functionality and evaluate its performance against a collection of real-world process models that were conducted in the scope of research projects.

A Generic Framework for Service-Based Business Process Elasticity in the Cloud

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2012

Cloud computing is a new model for the provisioning of dynamically elastic and often virtualized resources at the levels of infrastructures, platforms and software. Cloud platforms are being increasingly used for the deployment and execution of service-based business processes (SBPs). Nevertheless, the provisioning of elastic infrastructures and/or platforms is not sufficient to provide users with elasticity at the level of SBPs. Therefore, there is a need to provide SBPs with mechanisms to scale their resource requirements up and down whenever possible. This can be achieved using mechanisms for duplicating and consolidating business services that compose the SBPs. In this paper, we propose a formal model and a generic framework for elasticity of SBPs.

Multi-cloud provisioning of business processes

Journal of Cloud Computing, 2019

The Cloud offers enhanced flexibility in the management of resources for any kind of application while it promises the reduction of its cost as well as its infinite scalability. In this way, due to these advantages, there is a recent move towards migrating business processes (BPs) in the Cloud. Such a move is currently performed in a manual manner and only in the context of one Cloud. However, a multi- & cross-Cloud configuration of a BP can be beneficial as it can allow exploiting the best possible offers from multiple Clouds and enable to avoid the lock-in effect by also having the ability to deploy different instances of the BP in different Clouds close to the locations of BP customers. In this respect, this article presents a novel architecture of an environment which realises the vision of multi-Cloud BP provisioning. This environment involves innovative components which support the cross-level orchestration of cloud services as well as the cross-level monitoring and adaptation...