Hi, I'm James McGuire, editor of Datamation, and our topic today is business rules management software, BRMS. We'll be talking about key trends and best practices in BRMS. To talk about that, we've got four experts. With us is Connie Moore, senior VP of research at Digital Clarity. Hello to you, uh, Connie. Hi. And where are you located? Are you somewhere in the east coast, right, Connie? I'm uh near Washington DC. Aha. Okay. Uh also with us is Anchor Goyel, a principal product manager for Progress Software.
Hello to you anchor. Hey James. And I know you are in uh you are in Austin, correct? Right. Yes. Dana Gardner, analyst at Interber Solutions, all around IT smart person. Hello to you Dana. Hello James. Good to be with you again. Uh and it's is it Massachusetts? Where you at Dana? Uh New Hampshire actually. Very Okay. One of those New England states. All right. Uh, and Mr. Ken Hess, system administrator, author, well-known IT journalist. Hello to you, Ken.
Hey, thanks a lot, James. And it looks like it's it's sunny there in Oklahoma today. It is based on your window. I can move my head in front of it there. So, you can No, we like the sunshine actually. Yeah, it's one of the few sunny days we've had. Uh, we've had a lot of rain here, so more rain in California actually, as a matter of fact. So, business rules management software. I guess I would ask the four of you um you know, if you're going to advise this hypothetical company that's looking for a business rules software product, what sort of things would you advise them to look for given that there's a couple of con constituencies?
There's IT folks, there's business folks, uh what's important uh anchor, what's your take? And also, actually, if you give us a little nutshell, what actually does a BRMS solution do for a company? and then please talk about what you might think about when you're picking one out. Sure, Jim. So, um, business rules management systems um are really expert systems designed uh to manage your rules and business logic. So, instead of u keeping your logic in the form of application code in any software system, you've now extracted that logic and put it into a system that's specifically designed for uh managing rules.
So you're building and modeling and testing your rules in a separate expert system while keeping the software solutions just from an application standpoint where you're thinking about the user experience and different features and not have to worry about the logic in that code. So that's essentially what what a rules management system is. And um I think um you know when when companies from um when companies are looking at BRMS systems and and trying to figure out what are some of the things that we should be careful for.
Uh one of the things that we've seen customers do is um just try to understand why they're looking at a BRMS system. there could be a variety of different reasons why they've they've gone down that path and I think it's really critical for them to understand uh why they're doing so. Uh one of them um could be for example you're operating in an environment where the rules are constantly changing right so for example you're in a heavy compliance and regulatory environment for example financial services or the insurance sector um so much so that um every time a regulation changes you're just having difficulty keeping pace with the change that's happening and so um each change that happens from a regulation standpoint of months of development effort and now you're looking at a BRMS system where um you don't have to take that much development time in making those changes.
You're keeping up with that change with those regulations and compliance and making sure you can develop faster. So that's sort of one uh area where you would look at. I think the other thing that um companies would need to look at from a BRMS standpoint is well are you looking to go a BRMS route for making your business agile right any development of new products or changes to existing products requires IT resources for example right and every company says that we're always in short shortage of IT resources well so one of the things that you could do is um adopt the BRMS system that might be able to bring in business people to the mix.
So you now have them take the responsibility of the business logic in turn requiring um less IT resources and not having to wait for them. The other um opposite end to that is um companies where might which might come back and say hey look we've got plenty of ID resources right so that's really not our worry but the reason why we're not been able to be more agile is because um it development um is a really long process. It takes months for us to come out with any kind of a product or a product change.
And for them, they might be looking at a BRM system to shorten that development time because now you can specify and model and test your rules at the same time. So it's not about bringing business folks. It's still about it, but now you're using the rules engine rather than having to write all of that code. But I I think about the BRMS solution is is a place where the business folks and the IT folks kind of come together typically. Sure. Absolutely.
It's it's a tool where both business and IT need to collaborate with each other. So it's no longer the case where you know hey business you give us the requirements and send it over the wall to it and not have any say in how things are are happening. Um with a BRMS system it depends on how the organization wants to function. If uh it's the business people are comfortable writing the rules themselves, they still have to work with it in making sure the application is ready to function with that business logic.
In the other sense, you can have IT teams writing rules in a rules engine but also collaborating with the business people and saying, "Hey, look, you gave me a set of five requirements. You forgot about those three. What am what am I supposed to do with those three?" Mhm. So, it's it's always a collaboration between business and IT. James, this is Connie. Yes. Can I make a um an adjustment? I think whenever you have these conversations, it's the business analyst that is that key bridge between IT and the business.
And the business analyst may actually sit in IT. They may sit in uh different parts of the business. They may have a specialized competency center. They could be many different places around an organization. And no matter what technology we're talking about, whether it's business process management or business rules or predictive analytics or the list goes on and on and on. We're talking about more and more these complex technologies that are now evolving, right? where the business has a lot of control over it, but not just any old business person.
It's usually some very well-trained, technically oriented business analyst. And I think that's an important distinction to make. Well, how does that tie into how a business might um select a BRMS solution? Connie, what's your take on that? Well, I have an opinion about uh business rules um software that you should be looking for something that's very logical and very straightforward and easy to use. And not all products are like that. Some are so unbelievably complicated they will literally give you a migraine.
And if you're trying to empower the business, you don't want a tool like that. So you want the tool to get the job done and if it's a complex process like underwriting I it you have a lot you're expecting of the tool but at the end of the day if business is to be empowered then they need a business ready tool that can be understood by technically oriented business people an intuitive user interface in other words. Absolutely. Absolutely. Ken what's your take?
What would you advise people in terms of selecting a BRMS solution? Yeah, I would have to agree with Connie and in that uh it needs to be something that's easy for people to use or you know it's not going to get the adoption level that you're really looking for in the business and and that's what you really want is for people to uh engage and uh you know really use the tool to its fullest extent not just use it as a you know an Excel spreadsheet or something. uh you you really want full engagement.
So, it's it's going to have to be something intuitive, easy to use, and something that's a little more um not just user friendly, but but also businessfriendly. So, I I think the choice is going to have to come down to something that's uh you know, uh business friendly and and user friendly. Dana, what's your take? I know you blog about a lot of topics. If you're going to blog about this, what would you say like how how to select a BRMS solution?
Yeah, I think youth experience is becoming top of mind for lots of different parts of of IT and business and that I think uh is supported by the need for uh additional automation across what we're doing with it. The role of it is shifting towards a broker specifier getting out of the weeds of uh implementation and deployment and we're seeing that cut across a lot of these other different types of tools and management. So in addition to the user experience, we also want to look at a system that's able to be backwards compatible to existing rules uh and the data where those rules exist.
We want to be forward compatible and recognize that we're doing extended enterprise activities. And so we're going to need to have open APIs and open embrace of standards and the ability to uh extend our business rules regardless of where the business processes take us. So you want to look for something that's platform agnostic that's not just in one framework or one tool set that uh is cuts across the breadth and depth of uh the new um openness that we're looking for across organizations and processes but also not have to cut bait and start from scratch.
Something that gives you uh return on your investment for what you've had in place with your rules engines uh and business processes all along. Yeah. Yeah, the new openness in particular, it's amazed me over the last like say five years or so. The idea of interoperability used to be a good idea. Now it's it's like actually like table stakes. You can't even walk up to the table without being really interoperable. Yeah, I think that's one of the reasons we're seeing a lot of um adoption of open source uh readily.
Uh you know, we're seeing more and more companies say I'm going to open source this code or I'm going to make a community development approach available to this. So they re realize that uh the community is a great way to have that um uh adoption of openness and and more migration and interoperability but uh recognizing that islands are are no longer the issue and you have to be able to extend across islands whether it's islands of automation platform application interfaces what have you what about key trends uh shaping BRMS today whether it's something involving data analytics a mobile play what what are what are what's what's shaping Anchor, what's your sense of that?
Um, I think uh both of these are are things that are actually shaping the trends for BRMS from an analytic standpoint. Um, right. There's there's this big uh notion about big data and how every company's talking about big data. And what they don't realize is that um while big data uh plays in a market where you have these disparate data sources dynamically looking at data and coming out with trends, there's still a manual person uh process involved where once you've identified these trends and patterns from that data, you you're still looking at that trends and trying to figure out what decision should I make next.
And I think that's where uh the BRMS systems come into play as well is um once you've identified these you know 100 or 200 odd variables of dynamic data that you've analyzed um feed them into a decision engine that says okay based on these patterns and trends here's the decision that you should be making. I think definitely that that decision analytics notion is is definitely a big trend. I think mobile is another one. I'm I'm just not sure whether mobile um u when is mobile really going to take off from a rules perspective because most of the enterprises and people that are building mobile apps are not really redefining their business logic.
They're building a mobile front end to an already existing business logic that might reside in a mainframe system or any other kind of system and they're right now all geared towards building a mobile app that's um focuses on the UI not really the logic. So it's it's processing power but it's the data is not resident on the device. Right. Yeah. Hey James, just a thought on that. uh perhaps by combining a rules engine management capability with big data analysis, we'll start to change the way people think about the actual processes rather than just wrapping a a user experience from the mobile device on it.
You really do need to rethink the way you do work if in fact everybody in the field across your organization has access to all the data all the time with ease. So perhaps there is a an accelerant when you bring in a comprehensive rules management system to help you better focus on the processes rather than the applications and then you can take fuller advantage of things like mobile and big data and it can bring cloud solutions to bear on how to support those processes best.
When you're talking about a rethinking what do you mean what is being rethought there? Yeah. Uh it really you know when we look at the combination what some people call platform three of of cloud enablement mobile uh frontends and extension of of applications and data of big data collaboration um and social is part of that big data in my thinking but um we need to start doing business differently in terms of how work is defined and done and how resources are brought to bear on a problem.
And more and more we're seeing hybrid models where you're going to do certain things with certain applications internally. You're going to be looking to have much deeper integration with partners across your supply chain for example or extended enterprise activities. And uh simply using the same old apps in the same old way doesn't doesn't get you the the productivity benefits of rethinking how you do business whether it's feedback loops from analysis that gets injected into um decision- making on a constant basis.
Whether it's about how you take advantage of globalization and outsourcing or resourcing back, whether you're thinking about how to take advantage of uh people on the ground rather than offices getting people out into the field. So it it it begs more than just an extension of existing apps and data to a mobile device. You need to rethink how you do things. in a rules engine helps you actually take those steps with a confidence, lower risk and a sense that you can get complexity without uh chaos.
I I think that's true and I think uh you could make an argument a a strong argument that business rules is a is a core foundational technology that should be found at the heart of many things. But I also think that for whatever reason business rules often gets overlooked. Um so you have conversations about predictive analytics and big data and and so forth all the time and business rules never comes up. You I I myself live in the business process management uh world and um we've moved on to adaptive case management. you hear collaboration and social and analytics and big data and process mentioned and business rules often goes unmentioned and I think it may be because there's not a strong um maybe u widespread understanding of them.
It may be because they've never hit a critical mass in terms of volumes of sales or whatever. But I think that business rules makes makes all of this decisioning whether it's a process or uh analyzing a massive amount of information. It makes all of it better, but people often just forget about it. I I I I'll just add in I completely agree with you Connie on that and then and I think there there are a couple reasons for that. One is um what you pointed out lack of awareness, right?
Rule engines have existed for about 15 odd years now. There's still so many people that have absolutely no idea that rule engines exist. And when we talk to these guys and we talk to these prospects and we tell them about rules engines and uh for some there's immediately like a light bulb moment that goes on and says, "Wow, my life would have been so much simpler if I knew something like this existed." And and I think the second piece of that is um from a big process standpoint when companies are uh implementing these big process chains and big BPM solutions these are big daunting systems that take a lot of time out of what the company should actually be focusing on.
So implementing a BPM solution for example in itself is so complicated that implementing rules engines which actually enhances the value of BPM never really crosses their mind. Don't you think though anchor that as as big data continues to rise BRMS will rise with it even though they're different ideas directly but they will be they will help each other absolutely any kind of decision that you think about right requires data you're you're not making a decision in silos you're you're making a decision based on several different amounts of data that you have and I think as you connect these data sources and you get a lot more information absolutely the more data you have, the better it is for a rules engine to look at all of these data points and give you that decision.
Ken, what's what's your take in terms of like what trends are are influencing the BRMS market? What what's shaping things out there? Well, I think Dana brought up some good points when he pointed out globalization and open-source and also uh crossplatform capability. I mean, people need access to their data everywhere and anywhere. and you know if they're at a coffee shop or if they're in uh Mumbai or if they're in London or wherever they are they need access on whatever device they have with them.
Uh so you know I think that's a big trend. It's it's not just mobile but it's it's absolute access to your data. So I think that's a a major trend that that we're going to to see in the future is that uh people will require access to their data anywhere, everywhere and on any device. What about things that you know actual pitfalls or things to be worried about, concerns, challenges regarding BR mess? Uh what what what's a major worry? Uh Connie, what's your sense?
What would you tell people about that? Um I think a a major concern I've already raised which is just it extreme complexity and I realize there are some processes that are just flatout uh complex because of regulatory requirements especially in insurance where you have every state with different legalities and so forth. Um but over complicating it will really hurt adoption, slow the projects down, turn them into very costly, expensive things. So I think a good way more complicated the user interface you mean the the user interface the you the everything the the the deployment um oh you mean the complexity of the product I mean the backend and the and the user interface.
Um, and I think one way to do this is to take inventory of the kinds of processes you have and what are their characteristics and then do a matching process because it may not be one single business rules engine is the total solution for the entire enterprise. It may be more horses for courses where a certain kind of process maps to a certain type of product. And I think that that's the kind of thinking I would do in order to save a lot of money and save a lot of time and a lot of uh aggravation.
It seems like, you know, any any product that asks IT folks and business folks to ask to to work closely together could have some built-in challenges to begin with. Um, Edgar, what's what's your take on things to be concerned about with with DRMS solutions? Uh, sure. I think, uh, there are a couple things. Um, I I completely agree from a a business IT standpoint that you're talking about user friendliness, right? But I also think that, um, the whole notion of, um, you need to figure out who the intended user actually is.
We do talk about, you know, business IT collaboration. Oftentimes what happens is even though you've bought a tool thinking that your business people are going to use it, businesses sort of revolt because they don't want to take on the ownership. They don't want to take on that liability. It's always easier to blame things on it if things go wrong rather than take that ownership. Right? So when we're talking about that collaboration, we we have to figure out who that intended user is.
And from a user friendliness aspect, if there's any chance that um you do want your business people to use it, you have to look at a tool which is um friendly for the business people not just from a UI aspect but from an aspect that you're not asking the business people to learn any kind of a proprietary language, right? It's so intuitive in the sense that without having to learn any kind of technology, you can start using the tool. Um uh the other thing I think was mentioned uh was one platform agnostic right but the whole notion that Connie brought up is from an enterprise standpoint you need to figure out whether you're looking at a rules engine for a very small project that you have in mind or you're looking to build like an enterprisewide decisioning strategy where as a company you're saying look all my business logic is going to reside in rule engines and the needs for each product might be different.
A and I think the last piece I think that that is a big risk that I see oftent times is um when you're looking at products when you're looking at different tools companies typically tend to give you a very superficial very simple demo of the product that you know blows everything out of the water just because they're using very simple rules and they know what the pitfalls of the product are. I would force the customers and the prospects to push back on those demos and say, "No, I want a really complex use case with hierarchical data associations, really complex logic because you never know um how complex the product is going to be to use when you're actually in a real live practical scenario.
So in other words, you would you would ask the salesperson to actually to use variables of the real company they're pitching to." Absolutely. And that's what we call as a proof of concept. Mhm. Right. You you go down, you say, "Well, I need to build a P, a proof of concept. Here's a sample of my most complex logic that I have in my company. Show me how your product works with that. So, it's it's a big investment and you don't want to go easy on any software vendor and take their word uh word of mouth, right?
You want to test them before making that investment. it. You don't want to be in a position two years down the line where you're actually suing a vendor, for example, that your product doesn't work and it's it's not, you know, I'm out a million dollars and and I'm still nowhere close to where I was supposed to be. Right. Dana, what do you think some potential pitfalls or or challenges are for a BRMS solution? Right. But I think you want to perhaps um be careful that you're dealing with a vendor where the rules engine is very ancillary to their main business as an afterthought and is therefore not very well engineered or sophisticated.
Uh you want to look for a vendor where the rules engine is a primary product line is an important part of their overall business and success. Um and with that you would probably see a well-engineered wellthoughtout product that is advancing beyond just a standalone um you know repository and becoming more like what we saw with software where it becomes more object-oriented modular where patterns of reuse where services orientation are brought to bear and where sophistication and scale are part of the top requirements so that you could either use it on a project basis or extend it to be an enterprisewide solution.
So you want to look for a well-gineered product from a vendor that uh looks at this product line as an essential part of its growth and success and that actually allows for uh patterns of reuse, a modular uh definition of what a good uh rules uh snippet or flow is and how you can then extend that and reuse it. And that helps on that whole issue about users, business users becoming more uh adept at this rather than starting from scratch every time they want to create a flow.
They've got something that's already welldeveloped that they can start from and and improve upon. And James, I think that's a bit of a complication. Um it just is what it is. But often business rules software is embedded in something bigger. And so then you get into the you're picking out the whole but the parts are very important too. Um and I think that can just become a complicating factor. You can also buy business rules engines directly and then have some someone or yourself integrate them into something bigger.
But I I I'm not sure what percentage of uh VRES are sold as part of something else, but it's I bet it's pretty high. Are are you recommending a standalone or or not standalone or it's not that's not the point? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was saying is that you know we've been talking about selecting and matching to your requirements and so forth, but the question becomes what are you buying and how is it packaged? Because if you perceive that you're buying I I'm sorry I keep using business process, but that's that's my that's my bag.
Um, if you perceive you're buying a a complex advanced business process management uh suite and business rules is actually a very important piece of that suite, but you may not realize it because it's one of many things. What becomes the more important thing? Do do you where do you really drill in and make sure it matches your requirement? I mean it could be that the whole thing matches your requirement and the business rules engine matches your requirement and everything is great or it could be something suboptimal and what do you suboptimize on for example I I just think it's a little bit complicated.
I I I just quickly say I I I agree with Connie it is a little bit complicated. Um and if you really think about it rule engines right or business logic doesn't exist in a silo. It's always part of a process. It's always part of this big stack of IT systems that a company has. And no one really wakes up in the morning saying, "Hey, I need to buy a rules engine." They have a problem and they wake up trying to solve that problem. And one way could be that you buy these separate components and try to work them in.
Uh which is where you will look for a standalone rules engine. The other way is you look at um either companies or software vendors that have this big solution suite. Um and in most cases that we've seen um rules engine as a component is just there so that they can take a checkbox right if the question comes in hey what do we do about rules we can say look we have something it might not be as sophisticated it might not be as user friendly but at least we have it so I think there's there's two ways either either you buy these components separately which are designed for that specific functionality or you're looking at a complete solution suite where everything is a small component but not all of those things are are the focus for a company.
You're saying that the complexity of the complete solution suite creates a lot of questions that may be more difficult to answer. Absolutely. Yeah. What about looking looking to the future say if we have this conversation you know three years from now and you know what we be talking about for business rules management software what's what does the future hold Ken what's your take on that where is this going the sector going? Well, I think from an architectural point of view, which is something I would be more familiar with, uh is everything will be SASbased.
I think that uh people will want so much access to their data and like I've said before on any device in any place. I think that um these uh solutions are going to be uh cloud-based or SASbased and you know you'll be able to pick up any device and get access to your data and um you know the rules that are that are happening right now in your business. So I I think that's the um I think that's going to be the trend. I think the uh the old school way of of doing things with a uh an internal system uh you know I guess walled off from the world is is going to to go the way of the dinosaur.
I think that uh cloud-based uh BRMS solutions are are going to be the future. Data your sense of the future looking at a crystal ball. What will we be talking about for BRMS a few years from now? Yeah, I think the profile and importance of rules and rules management and process management are going to get uh significantly greater and higher in people's thinking become more top of mind. Um and that's because when you do uh finally evolve towards some sort of a hybrid cloud uh with a lot of SAS and pass mixed in environment.
Um what defines your company? Uh what defines your company is the relationships between those assets and resources and the way that you manage a relationship between a supplier or a a partner and those rules need to be um really well managed, defined and reused and extensible and protected. We didn't talk too much about risk and compliance issues. So as the benefits and productivity of things like cloud uh grow and we adopt them where the resources reside and how they're supported on what hardware software platform or framework is less relevant but the relationships become more important and what defines my organization as a company is the rules that bind me to processes to work to assets resources groups of people and other enterprises themselves.
Therefore, this is becoming, I think, a much more important and essential part of any enterprise is good process, rules, management, and uh definition, extensibility, capability, and skills. Connie, your sense of the future of BRMS, where is this going? Yeah, I'd like to follow on to that and talk about a really I think significant development which is in fact we've alluded to it sort of the next generation development platform and there's a whole body of thought that I agree with that the whole boundary of business process management has gotten so squishy it's spilled over into other areas.
So you have the combination of a business process management suite with a business rules engine that also has analytics and collaboration and social and document management and output management. And you could kind of go on with this list. And what is happening now are uh vendors that make these platforms. This Oh, there goes my dog. I'm sorry. his next is he a expert by the way? Yeah, he's a expert on food. Okay, good. But uh these vendors that have these platforms, these expanded platforms, they are now building out ofthe-box apps and they are having their partner channel build out of the box apps and they can be cross industry, they can be industry specific.
And so what I see is just this plethora of new apps that are going to come out that have business rules in them and are going to have uh business process in them and analytics in them. And one of the key elements of these new out of the box apps and I'm not talking about mobile apps, I mean applications, right? Um is change. support for changing your roles, support for changing your processes, uh support for changing the data that you're monitoring coming from big data.
And I think this is going to be an explosion. Uh they're going to be so many new applications and they're all going to be based upon a much more flexible, adaptable platform. I think it'll be exciting times. Interesting. anchor your sense of the future of the air. Where is this going? Right. I think I agree a lot with um what the experts have said. Uh I think cloud is definitely a a big play um over the next several years. I think uh people will try to figure out what what going to the cloud would really mean whether it's it's as a service play or just hosted in in in a cloud or private cloud environment.
But I think also if you look at um the way rule engines exist today, right, we talk about um either um rule engines are a good fit if you've got uh constantly changing rules and either they're large or they're overly complex. And I think as we go on as this rule engines um as customers become more aware of rule engines uh there would be a big push towards simplifying the UI not from a business IT perspective but from an extent where um what about those customers where the rules aren't constantly changing where what happens with those customers where the rules aren't overly complex but they still want to be able to use a rules engine with a relatively simpler UI.
I think that that would be a really critical play as well. And I think um last piece would would be just this figuring out this big data piece. I think once all these data sources get connected um uh I was I was uh in a region uh a couple weeks ago where one of the biggest problem they said was our data sources are not connected. So rules engine we don't even think of using a rules engine because today we need data from 10 different data sources.
So we have to print out reports and individually look at those 10 different reports. There's no way those data that data is getting connected. And I think once that begins to happen you'll see a lot more adoption of these rules coming into play and and decisions being automated. You know that middle point there if I'm understanding you correctly you talked about simpler applications for a simpler a business that has simpler needs right is that is that you're talking about a different application altogether or one application that can scale up in simplicity or complexity either one either one I think doesn't really matter what what I what I was trying to say was rules uh shouldn't be thought of as overly complex and either a large volume or or constantly changing rules right if you have um rules that aren't constantly changing every 3 months or six months, right?
Maybe they're changing on an annual basis. Uh anytime you're building a new application, you should be thinking about well, where is my logic going to reside? Should it reside in the form of a code or should it reside in the form of rules engine? And when you start building out those applications which have a relatively simpler logic, you would still be able to use those rules engines because over the next several years, they've been so much simplified for those use cases.
Makes sense. All right. Well, that's a lot of good stuff. Uh I think someone learned something along the way. I know I did. Uh I appreciate the four of you's expertise and I'll send you a link. We can all tweet it. Uh thank you very much for joining us. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks.
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