Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM: intuitive modeling, agile rules, intelligent decisions. Software Innovations BRM

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1 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM: intuitive modeling, agile rules, intelligent decisions. Software Innovations BRM

2 2 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM Visual Rules BRM: the intuitive way to model, execute and seamlessly integrate business rules efficiently. Innovative competitors, globalisation of markets and constant change of legal frameworks are permanent challenges. That s why business success is increasingly dependent on two factors: agility and flexibility. This is where Business Rules Management (BRM) comes into play. It seamlessly integrates business departments along the entire life cycle of business logic. Integrated into process management, it also efficiently supports companies design lean and agile processes. Business Rules Management is especially useful in the following cases: When your company has numerous rules: optimize the organization and structuring of business logic. When you need to master high levels of complexity: pool IT and business expertise together by integrating your business departments directly. When your rules are dispersed: organize policies and optimize their reusability. When you want maximum transparency: create optimum traceability for your auditing requirements and other operations. When your business environment is subject to frequent changes: be prepared for changes in market structure and legislation. Not only does BRM help you manage frequent changes and optimizations in your business logic, it also helps you redefine it. When you want to speed up development: break out of typical development cycles. Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM Visual Rules BRM offers companies an intuitive graphical approach to introducing business rules management. This makes it popular not only with IT and the business departments that use it, but also with analysts all of whom give it an excellent rating. The model-based approach takes everyone into account and measurably shortens the time it takes to develop and implement new versions of existing rules. Visual Rules BRM provides comprehensive support to companies that need to define and build up user roles and how they interact, ensuring that the rules and roles comply with policies and that any changes are documented in an audit-proof manner. This even applies within heterogeneous teams whose members serve a variety of different tenants from various locations. Your advantages of using Visual Rules BRM Supports the entire life cycle of rules Intuitive and continuous graphical modeling Test-driven quality assurance Thorough, up-to-date documentation of rules and data models Comprehensive analysis and management of dependencies Central repository for common usage of rules Traceable change history and version control High reusability of rule models and data Covers all Java requirements for data and rule models without the need for programming Code generation for maximum performance Transparent and fully auditable rule execution Architecture with full multitenancy, including the management of tenants relations Scalable licensing and price model with low running costs and high ROI

3 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM 3 DHL The global leader in mail and logistic, DHL, uses Visual Rules BRM to intelligently automate pallet tracking, sort letters and calculate postage. This puts the company in the position to continuosly optimize and increase margins by responding more flexibly to change, improving efficiency and making full use of the highest discount rates in relevant tarif systems. Trusted by top names a selection The reliability and flexibility offered by Visual Rules BRM and proven in many different projects have made Visual Rules BRM a market leader. Companies from diverse sectors across the globe rely on this award-winning software to implement and manage their business rules. They have been convinced by our product s technology and benefit from tangible savings in operative use due to the increased efficiency in maintenance and development. HanseMerkur Using Visual Rules BRM, the German insurance group pushed its automation rate for claims processing beyond the 30 percent mark. We are not the only ones to be impressed by this achievement: the company picked up the Europe Gold Award for Excellence! Green Charge Networks Visual Rules BRM is the backbone of the GridSynergy energy management solution, which delivers status updates in real time that are supported by decisionmaking aids and recommendations. Electricity suppliers benefit from improved handling of demand peaks, automated requirements planning and lower investment and operating costs. Suzuki International Europe Visual Rules BRM enabled sensitive data from predecessor systems to be consolidated and transferred directly to the SAP financial accounting system. The graphical modeling approach enables close cooperation between business and IT departments. ThyssenKrupp Steel Europe Using Visual Rules BRM, ThyssenKrupp is gradually replacing it s self-programmed models for managing production of various grades of steel with easy to modify Visual Rules BRM rule models. Thanks to the graphical rule modeling provided by Visual Rules BRM, Thyssen- Krupp possesses an agile solution for manufacturing various grades of steel. Application scenarios Business Process Management: process automation, electronic data exchange, workflow routing CRM: campaign management, customer profiling and portfolio analysis Industry: machine control, monitoring and diagnosis, rule-based evaluation of sensor data, automatic detection and escalation of critical system states Business Intelligence: early warning systems, calculation of KPIs, balanced scorecards Financial controlling: accounting, pricing, risk evaluation Supply Chain Management: scheduling material requirements, consignment tracking Software development: data migration, modernization of old systems

4 4 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM Greater efficiency: Visual Rules BRM covers the entire life cycle of rules. Visual Rules BRM supports business and IT departments throughout the iterative process of creating, managing, optimizing and maintaining business rules. All steps in the life cycle of flow rules, decision tables and event-driven state flows are executed with intuitive Visual Rules BRM graphical tools and components, which you can individually combine and integrate. BRM life cycle Modeling/Optimization Modeling and optimization Once rules have been modeled graphically, they can be tested immediately and tried out in extensive simulation scenarios. Business users are able to create and maintain rules without any programming knowledge. Execution/Monitoring Administration/Deployment BRM Administration and deployment The Visual Rules BRM Team Platform greatly simplifies how to organize, recycle and keep track of rules as they are updated to new versions: business and IT departments can efficiently co-manage these tasks. Further highlights are the unique multitenancy and powerful build tools. Execution and monitoring Visual Rules BRM supports different execution scenarios: from direct integration into a Java application through mass data processing to deploying rules as web services in a service-oriented infrastructure. What all these scenarios have in common is the ability of users to record execution statistics during runtime and to monitor and trace how rules are executed. Modeling rules with Visual Rules BRM Flow rule Decision table State flow

5 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM 5 Modeling and optimization: different rule types, one graphical approach. A versatile and clear-headed approach right from the start, the unique, intuitive Visual Rules BRM modeling approach ensures that even business users with no programming experience can achieve effective results in no time. Flow rules, decision tables and eventdriven state flows are graphically modeled and can be simulated and tested subsequently. Modeling The intuitive Visual Rules BRM Modeler makes it easy to model rules even when the business logic is very complex. Analytical tools Documentation Once rules are modeled, Visual Rules BRM generates comprehensive graphical documentation of the rule and data model with a fingertipp. Analysis Sophisticated analytical tools make it quick and easy for users to uncover dependencies between rules and data models. Descriptive diagrams illustrate rule dependencies and data usage. Compare Editor displays changes to data and rules. Test and simulation Special tools help business users to define and organize their test cases. In addition, they can view execution statistics and test results, to analyze how they each deviate from expected reference values. Graphical debugging helps to interactively identify errors and check the plausibility of the rule logic. This test-driven approach ensures that only functionally correct rules are activated. Test cases are defined in Test Editor. When introducing the mobile inventory application to additional channels of distribution in the REWE group, we need to implement further requirements of the business units. Being able to easily adapt the underlying business rule models, this expansion is accomplished very effectively. The major points is that the rules can be discussed on a business level thanks to their graphical representation. Thomas Friedl, REWE Group

6 6 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM Administration und deployment: efficient, secure, swift. Build for change never before has business logic needed to be as versatile and agil. Working on new rules or rule changes in a team calls for special tools, methods and processes. At the same time, it is essential that only those rules that are both error free and correctly fulfill the specific business objective make their way into production. Visual Rules BRM features and tools cover all these needs. Administration Visual Rules BRM Team Platform coordinates the simultaneous editing of rule models by several authors and manages access rights for groups, users and tenants. In addition to rules, tests and documentation, the platform allows you to manage as many other documents as you like within rule projects, which makes them centrally available in their respective versions to all project participants. You can graphically compare and merge different versions at the push of a button. Visual Rules BRM in action: deploying rules Deployment Deployment is carried out either manually with Visual Rules BRM Modeler or automated as part of a build process. Automated deployment can be configured and monitored in Visual Rules BRM Team Platform or using Visual Rules BRM Builder, which is integrated into the build processes. Both approaches enable rule versions to be deployed on the Visual Rules BRM Execution Platform without downtime (hot deployment). Team Server repository Business/IT alignment Business IT Team Server build management Objectives Focus on business issues Quick and easy changes Responsibility for business logic Focus on technical issues Clear instructions from business department Lower maintenance costs BRM results More versatile software Lower costs Higher quality As a unique cooperation platform, Visual Rules BRM has been shown to reduce development time and costs by up to 50%, while cutting maintenance time and costs by up to 90%. It supports the clear separation of roles between business and IT departments, creating a new model of cooperation within companies and beyond. Team Server access control

7 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM 7 Execution and monitoring: benefit from the versatility and traceability provided by Visual Rules BRM. Visual Rules BRM can be integrated into a broad range of architectures and ensures greater transparency across the entire span of your business processes. Its integrated, flexible BRM gives you an overview of all rules, at all times. And you can intervene directly whenever the necessary! Execution Visual Rules BRM Execution Platform allows different tenants to be served by rules made available in the form of web services even for diverse IT landscapes and legacy systems. It supports SOA integration standards and different version control options, which facilitate reliable rule management even in very complex scenarios. For the purpose of ensuring maximum security, usage and access rights can be defined precisely for users, teams and tenants. Batch processing With Visual Rules BRM Batch Platform, the business logic created for interactive software applications is also used for the non-interactive processing of mass data. The batch applications satisfy the highest requirements in relation to performance and processing large volumes of data. Visual Rules BRM in action: executing rules Execution Platform web console Monitoring In the graphical model, runtime statistics display the rules processed per request along with the processing time. This allows you to monitor all execution details while the system is running. The evaluation of log files and incremental rule execution supply further information. Access control on Execution Platform Your benefits High runtime performance and clustering capability Business rules as web service for SOA integration Comprehensive version and dependency management Dynamic identification of suitable rule models at the time of execution Same rules for batch processing and dialog mode Sequential or parallel execution Statistics in rule model

8 8 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM Design and architecture: seamless integration, powerful services. Regardless of whether you are working with client server systems, enterprise applications or business processes Visual Rules BRM allows you to swiftly adapt the business logic to new market developments, regulations and strategic decisions. Visual Rules BRM technology integrates seamlessly into your current IT infrastructure, merges with your existing applications and supplies high-performance services throughout your company. Visual Rules BRM architecture Modeler Administration Frontends Client Rules Modeling Analysis Testing Deployment Team Console Execution Console Identity Management BRM Server Team Platform Collaboration Rule Repository Builder Building Tagging Testing Deployment Execution Platform Rule Services Batch Platform Mass Data Processing Identity Management Processes Device Data & Events Repositories Execution Core Runtime Runtime Environment Enterprise Systems Visual Rules BRM components Visual Rules BRM contains powerful components for creating, managing and running business logic for all of your applications. Visual Rules BRM Database Integrator Standardized access to relational databases, including transaction control Easy generation of executable programs for the rule-based analysis and processing of all types of data (e.g. data warehouse) Visual Rules BRM Modeler Intuitive graphical modeling of rules, decision tables and state flows Integrated test and simulation management Detailed execution statistics Test execution and debugging in graphical model Rule documentation generated as HTML, DOC and PDF Ant-Tasks and Maven-Plug-ins for automation of code generation, test execution and rule deployment

9 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM 9 Visual Rules BRM Team Platform Centralized rule repository Version control for rules and other documents User- and team-based access control with audit log and automatic or manual locking Recyclable rules and data models Visual Rules BRM Batch Platform Designed for batch processing scenarios of any kind Powerful, transparent mass data processing Rules for interactive scenarios can be recycled Visual Rules BRM Execution Platform Hot deployment for replacing changed rules without interruption and storing them in a rule artifact database Deploying several rule versions as web services Dynamic identification of suitable rule models for service requests and metadata support Recording of call history, including statistics Configurable access control, including for web service requests Can be integrated directly into own applications as Java library (Execution Core) Enterprise-wide business rules management with Visual Rules BRM Visual Rules BRM scales up all the way from stand-alone scenarios to company-wide use and enterprise decision management. Visual Rules BRM offers fully proven and comprehensive multitenancy. It is used to define roles according to responsibilities in dispersed, heterogeneous teams and to monitor compliance with the allocated access rights. In order to meet even the most stringent governance requirements, a variety of tried-and-tested features control, monitor and document the entire life cycle of rules. The components involved adapt flexibly to the organization of manual and automatic processes defined by companies. Visual Rules BRM architecture has full multitenancy, enabling scalable infrastructure and common use of rules and services. Operations throughout your company will become even more cost-efficient and require significantly less maintenance effort to maintain. Several tenants can make simultaneous use of instances of Visual Rules BRM server components. In its default configuration, the users of one tenant cannot view the rules, data, rule services or build processes, users and authorization structures of the other tenants. Tenant relationships For service providers and companies organized into independently operated departments and units, the tenant relationships offer the additional option of sharing rules and data both between service providers and their tenant and among tenants themselves. This enterprise functionality is the basis for a wide variety of business models and new service concepts such as SaaS, cloud services, collaborations as well as the outsourcing of certain rule-based services. Multitenancy with Visual Rules BRM Tenant A Visual Rules Modeler Tenant B Visual Rules Modeler Tenant C Visual Rules Modeler A B Visual Rules server components Web application server Multitenancy Tenant relationship Infrastructure C Operating system Hardware Service provider/company A B C Database

10 10 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM Flexible and convenient rights and user management The centralized Identity Management makes it easy to create tenants. Each tenant then manages its own users, groups, roles, rights, domains and applications or they can either hand this task back to a service provider or delegate it to another trustworthy tenant. At the same time, operators and companies always retain the ability to document, manage and monitor all relevant actions and rights allocations in accordance with compliance requirements. Identity Management Multitenancy and tenant relationships your benefits Higher scalability: On the basis of a single database, you can run several instances of Visual Rules BRM Team Platform and Execution Platform and provide them to tenants and customers. New tenants can be introduced during runtime and cause no direct changes to the existing IT infrastructure. Greater cost-efficiency: Tenants can jointly use software licenses and share maintenance costs. A clearer infrastructure guarantees better service and faster updates. New service concepts and business models through the secure sharing of rules and data according to defined tenant relationships. The Bosch IoT Suite: Technology for a ConnectedWorld. Visual Rules BRM is a core component of the Bosch IoT Suite. Developed by Bosch Software Innovations, this IoT platform provides the technological basis for applications in the Internet of Things (IoT) and integrates every feature required for pooling devices, users, companies, and partners. The objective? To efficiently develop innovative and sustainable solutions for new business models. Our IoT vision The Bosch IoT Suite is a highly efficient platform with which developers can quickly design, supply, and operate cloud-based IoT applications. Application developers benefit from the Bosch IoT Suite s wide range of functions, the existing integration of core components with each other, the high degree of modularization and state-of-theart APIs for flexible solution development, the superior performance and reliability, the built-in, consistent security concept. With the Bosch IoT Suite, devices, mobile devices, and third-party systems can be integrated easily and securely, and the end user can define and implement the necessary processes and rules.

11 Business Rules Management with Visual Rules BRM 11 Bosch IoT Suite architecture Business & End User User Interface Design Tools Editors Identity Management Business Process Management (BPM) Business Rules Management (BRM) Big Data Processing (BDP) Analytics Models Tenants Users Roles Relations Modeling Simulation Implementation Execution Monitoring Reporting Modeling Optimization Administration Deployment Execution Monitoring Data Access Transformation Data Mining Data Analytics Visualization Information Models Process Models Rule Models Permissions Device Management (M2M) Device Integration SW-Provisioning Central Registry Event Management Common Environment Design Time Repository Core functions of the Bosch IoT Suite The Bosch IoT Suite comprises a large number of integrated services with a focus on: Device management Not only does the machine-to-machine component (M2M) of the Bosch IoT Suite provide a high-performance and reliable connection to things, it also helps you to operate a secure, flexible, and transparent infrastructure for distributed things and devices. Thanks to the device management, users can abstract devices and make them available as logical things or systems within the commercial context of IoT applications. Business logic Characterized by its intuitive graphical modeling, the Business Rules Management (BRM) component also enables users to perfectly organize and run any kind of business logic. It provides companies with consistent support throughout the iterative process of creating, managing, optimizing, and maintaining business rules. Process and integration logic A successful IoT application needs a defined, logical sequence of process steps and integration points: What should the steps be for running the application? What systems, devices, and data have to be accessed at what point? When should users be involved in the process? Thanks to its intuitive modeling, approach the Business Process Management (BPM) component allows business processes and the integration of third-party systems to be defined, technically implemented, and executed. Data mining and analytics Data analysts can use the Big Data Processing (BDP) component to analyze big data created as part of IoT applications. Thanks to graphical modeling, users can employ the workbench to access data, then transform it and create powerful forecasts that they can visualize in a meaningful way for domain experts. Benefits of the Bosch IoT Suite Fast application development thanks to integrated IoT middleware that covers rules, process and device management, orchestration, and operation. Open platform due to the incorporation of numerous open-source software products and consistent standards support. State-of-the-art security technology that can be used directly in application development. Availability of a trusted and secure IoT cloud. Consistent and systematic access to Bosch devices and third-party devices based on open standards using information models derived from business logic. Flexible and adaptable pricing model (depending on the number of connected devices, users, transactions) that also allows for partner business models with revenue sharing.

12 Europe Bosch Software Innovations GmbH Schöneberger Ufer Berlin Germany Tel Fax Americas Bosch Software Innovations Corp. 161 N. Clark Street Suite 3550 Chicago, Illinois 60601/USA Tel Fax Asia Bosch Software Innovations c/o Robert Bosch (SEA) Pte Ltd. 11 Bishan Street 21 Singapore Tel Fax Bosch Software Innovations GmbH, the Bosch Group s software and systems house, designs, develops, and operates innovative software and system solutions that help our customers around the world both in the Internet of Things (IoT) and in the traditional enterprise environment. We place particular focus on the topics of mobility, energy, manufacturing, and building. Our IoT platform the Bosch IoT Suite allows the interaction of devices, users, companies and partners on a centralized platform. This enables the development of innovative and future-oriented solutions for new business models. With some 550 associates worldwide, Bosch Software Innovations has locations in Germany (Berlin, Immenstaad, and Stuttgart), Singapore, China (Shanghai), and the United States (Chicago and Palo Alto). More information can be found at The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. It employs roughly 360,000 associates worldwide (as per April 1, 2015). The company generated sales of 49 billion euros in 2014.* Its operations are divided into four business sectors: Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 440 subsidiary and regional companies in some 60 countries. Including its sales and service partners, Bosch is represented in roughly 150 countries. This worldwide development, manufacturing, and sales network is the foundation for further growth. In 2014, Bosch applied for some 4,600 patents worldwide. The Bosch Group s strategic objective is to create solutions for a connected life. Bosch improves quality of life worldwide with products and services that are innovative and spark enthusiasm. In short, Bosch creates technology that is Invented for life. Additional information is available online at *The sales figure disclosed for 2014 does not include the former joint ventures BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH (now BSH Hausgeräte GmbH) and ZF Lenksysteme GmbH (now Robert Bosch Automotive Steering GmbH), which have since been taken over completely. 04/2015 RE