Business Rule Management and Processes

I have noticed the increase in amount of talks and webcasts on the net treating and evangelizing the alliance of Business Rule Management Systems (BRMS) and Business Process Management. I have heard some when I had time to, because I work on the topic and I am passionated by the possibilities that BRMS allow for. I am not going to list all the reasons why avery BPM project, design and requirement gathering method, as well as implementation should have Business Rules as one of its core components or concerns.

I want to put attention on two talks:

1. The first one has been held at gartner's Business Process Managemebt summit in Las Vegas this year (4-7 february 2008). Marc Kerremans gived a talk entitled "Business Rule Management: State of the Art" where he gave an introduction to BRM and tackled the question: "What added value does BRM bring to BPM?"
2. The talks that are to be held at the Business Rules Conference, this year from June 16-18 at the Marriott Hotel, Munich, Gemany. A key note presentation is to be given by Ronald G. Ross at the opening. The talk by Ralph Nijpels (KLM): "Interaction between
   datamodels, rules and processes", by Prof. Stef Joosten (CS dept. Open University): "Can business rules make process models obsolete?" and the talk by Jan Dietz (TU Delft, Netherlands): "About the nature of Business Rules - Some basic answers from the Perspective of Enterprise Ontology" are the ones that immediately caught my eye. The first two tackle the question of how to bring BR and BPM and the thirs one askes questions about semantics and Business Rules.

This was just a small entry to signal the fact that many talks are held to make the case for Business Rules and Business Rules and Business Process Management in particular. I foresee even more of these and related industrial conferences as the matter gets atention from the industry. As for the Business Rules Conference in June I will write a dedicated entry to tell about the talks that seem most interesting to me (at least from the name of them).

Marwane El Kharbili.