Mashups redefining business processes

BANGALORE, INDIA: Every non-IT executive would have at some point felt frustrated at not being able to access certain information and having to depend on the IT helpdesk. Business mashups aims to tackle such situations by being able to automate business processes. And that best part is that even a sales person will now be able to define the sales process be it a sales proposal generation and automate it.

“Its (mashups) about helping to very rapidly deploy solutions, its about helping IT departments to be more agile and helping business to be more self sufficient and these are usual business processes simple business solutions. So with business mash ups you can easily automate processes. It helps IT to deliver applications faster and more efficiently, “said Carl Theobald, Senior Vice President of Products, Serena Software in an interview with CIOL.

According to Theobald the fundamental business benefit is that the user is taking a manual process which is error prone and time consuming and you are doing that without having to spend a lot of money on writing code on building solution, which is what IT departments generally do. So, ROI would definitely vary based on the kinds of business processes you are automating. “Fundamentally the RoI lies in the fact that without having to write code and spend money on developing a solution you are rapidly automating a process where it used to manual and you are saving lots of time and money.”

Mashup On demand

While mashups by itself is not a new concept, going by the demand for on demand apps, Serena has launched its mashup server – on demand, which can be accesses through the Internet. With this customers can download design software design an application and load it back onto serena’s mashup.

According to Theobald: “Mashups helping business analysts in IT to mashup applications, because end of the day, the business user doesn’t care where the data lives. They just have a problem, they have a business problem, which is manual, error-prone and they like to automate it, streamline it and improve it and so that’s exactly what we target. We help business users to use it so that they do not have to depend on IT and developers. So the sales ops person can create this application and put it on the on-premise server or we have this mash up server on the cloud and the customer can download the design software from the mashup server.”

So, can we call it a mashup delivered as SaaS? Yes, says Theobald, comparing the whole solution to which can be as easily downloaded from Serena’s Website like Apple’s iTunes. “We have a mashup server, which we serve on the cloud and this mashup composer, which is a client application which you can download something like iTunes.” 

The business user can now use this environment to define his business process. So when the user is ready to deploy it he can run that process they have to push it up to a server so that people can actually interact and like iTunes connects to Apple’s server the mashup composer connects to Serena’s  mashup on-demand server after registration based on a ‘pay per month per user’model.

The end users of that process can use a standard browser and interact in the process connecting to Serena’s servers. Mashups can be used to design a number of processes and can be used across the enterprise be it sales people submitting a request for a discount, or the helpdesk for IT help or even a HR process. The user can start a process or interact with the process if its in their inbox to approve or review through a browser connecting to Serena’s servers.  

However, not all are comfortable with SaaS and so Serena also supports on premise version. Says Theobald: “We launched our new mashup server on-demand because we feel that is going to broaden our reach. Basically, it is two different deployment models and lot of companies are looking to SaaS as an alternative way because  they can get up and running very quickly.”

On a cautious note, Theobald admits that it will be a long time before companies completely run on SaaS, but says its growing.

The SOA connection

As lot of companies are investing in SOA, what happens to mashups in a SOA based environment?

“I think all these vendors are gonna be doing is to make mashups more valuable—they are going to be exposing out the interfaces to web services and as service oriented architecture, but that is going to be good for us. And so what we do as part of our capabilities  and through mashups is that we can connect very easily to all the systems and web services and bring the information that is relevant for that process into that process.”

So, if a business user wants specific information say, regarding how much business he’s done with a customer, if they’ve paid or if its an outstanding payment - that information may be stored in SAP which may be on premise. But, with web services, the user can pull out that information.

According to Theobald: “Business mashup sits in the middle and so the value of mashups increases as Web services are exposed out. We don’t require you to mash things up depending on the business process. But the value increases as you connect it to other systems through web services and again this kind of an integration is usually a nightmare.”

Agile on demand

Enterprise agility is a buzz-word that focuses on how quickly the IT department to can cater to changing business needs. In response to this need, Serena is planning a solution called agile on demand. Automating processes for many enterprises is a  process –heavy,  planned out procedure lasting for many months.

While regulated industries do not have much of a choice there are a lot of organizations that are trying to get the advantage of agile. From a long list of requirements, which could possibly take around 18 months to be delivered agile looks at specific priority requirements and looks to deliver those requirements in maybe two to four weeks.

Says Theobald: “In reality , the requirements  do change and so by doing things in small amounts you personally deliver stuff  more quickly so the business user sees something sooner but then you can react to change a lot more efficiently too because you have not started on all the other requirements yet.”

However, Serena is planning to release only the on demand version and not an on –premise. “We are not going to have an on premise solution we are only doing it on demand. So this solves the problem of people not having to be in the same room.

Also, the tool is very prescriptive so you don’t have to be an agile expert, it guides you. So, its going to be on demand so its easy to get it up and running very quickly because you don’t have to provision hardware for it. Our goal is that these application development teams they will find it that it is easy and helps them to be more productive.”

The inhibitors

All said and done, how easy or difficult is it for an organization to switch to on demand after having invested in on premise software?

It depends on the vendor, says Theobald. Some of the questions that need answers are: whether the vendor has a migration to on-demand. Pricing is another issue if the on premise software has been purchased for a perpetual license. Technology feasibility - how to get the data to the cloud? 

Ease of support for integration, with an on-premise solution deployed it may be integrated with other systems, which may be on-premise and so during the move to the cloud how will those integrations be maintained?

“There is no easy solution for that; different vendors have different approaches to it. It is still blurred. For companies that are already on premise there is no easy path,” concludes Theobald.