BPMM: A grid-based architectural framework for business process meta management

Abstract

Business process management (BPM) tools and techniques are used in a large number of commercial institutions for automating flows of products and services within corporate and without. It is not uncommon that business processes are involved with versatile collaboration, complicated computation and geographical distribution of data. Hence, it is necessary to combine different technologies to implement BPM systems. We argue that traditional BPM platforms are not sufficient for dynamic and adaptive business environment; and a new paradigm on BPM needs to exist-the one we proposed in this paper is called Business Process Meta Management (BPMM). On the other hand, computational Grids are emerging as an infrastructure for next generation business computing, enabling distributed resource management, and large-scale computational problems in science, engineering and commerce. In this paper, we introduce a framework for BPMM based upon Business Process Grid services that are built on top of Grid services. Business Process Grid services are used to provide uniform, robust, scalable and flexible access to highly diversified business processes and business systems. BPMM defines a set of additional components to implement the services of distributed BPMM functionality on Grid-connected software and hardware platforms.