Transforming Business Processes into the Cloud While a number of major companies have invested in cloud technology to improve efficiency and gain flexibility, some organisations still face challenges in harnessing the benefits of new technologies. We spoke to Robert Woitsch about the CloudSocket project’s work in introducing the concept of Business Process as a Service (BPaaS), that could bring organisations closer to the cloud The pace of IT innovation offers significant opportunities to the commercial sector, as the emergence of new technologies enables companies to re-think the way they deliver their services, improving efficiency, gaining flexibility in their business models or reducing costs. Many major companies are investing in cloud computing for example, yet smaller companies with less resources typically find it more difficult to harness the benefits of new technologies, a prime motivation behind the work of the CloudSocket project. “Our common goal is to support organisations in the digitalisation of their business, based primarily on transforming their business processes,” explains Robert Woitsch, the project’s Principal Investigator. The project aims to support those organisations in their digital transformation, some of whom may not have a high level of technical expertise, by introducing a new way of using business processes. “The organisations specify their business processes, and based on that, we then propose an alignment of those business processes with cloud offerings,” continues Woitsch.
CloudSocket Business and IT-Cloud Alignment using a Smart Socket Dr Robert Woitsch, Project Coordinator BOC Asset Management GmbH Operngasse 20b 1040 Wien Austria T: +43-1-905 10 56 E: robert.woitsch@boc-eu.com W: www.cloudsocket.eu BOC: www.boc-group.com ADONIS: https://uk.bocgroup.com/adonis/ ADOIT: https://uk.bocgroup.com/adoit/ Dr Robert Woitsch is the Managing Director of BOC Asset Management GmbH, where he is responsible for innovation and knowledge management. He has worked in EC innovation projects across several areas over the last years, including knowledge management, information and data management, and Industry . .
This work centres first on understanding how a company operates and what they want to achieve with their business processes, such as invoicing for example. While a start-up may only send out a small number of invoices at first, this may grow as the company expands, at which point they may want to adopt a more efficient method, which entails changing their IT. “The business processes have changed, but the IT infrastructure may not have evolved in the same way,” points out Woitsch. The project is developing the concept of Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) via a marketplace, which Woitsch believes will help start-ups to use cloud technology. “A trusted third party, such as publicly funded incubators, acts as a broker
benefits from the opportunity to match their business needs to trusted IT in a flexible way. “The challenge is to gain flexibility. An organisation uses a business process as a service for a certain time period, and if the business process has been changed, a more appropriate IT infrastructure in the cloud is aligned,” explains Woitsch. In particular, organisations elaborating new business models need a high degree of flexibility – they want to only use what they need. This also brings benefits for IT providers. “An IT provider can offer their solutions to a focused target group, which supports the development of a niche market. They can offer tools in the context of business processes through such marketplaces and interact with customers with respect to their business needs.”
The challenge is to gain flexibility. An organisation uses a business process as a service for a certain time period, and if the business process has been changed, a more appropriate IT infrastructure in the cloud is aligned. and operates the marketplace. Different providers offer solutions on that marketplace, whereas customers search for solutions,” he explains. “The marketplace offers IT solutions in the form of business process models, and hence this reduces the need for technical expertise in order to make an appropriate choice for a particular business need.” The more precisely a customer can define their requirements, the more effectively the BPaaS modelling framework based on ADONIS can help in identifying the appropriate BPaaS in the cloud. The broker is effectively a new service, potentially a new source of employment, while the customer
This means providers can focus on their core area of expertise, while also building a better understanding of their customers’ needs. The project’s research also holds relevance to the emerging paradigm of ‘industry 4.0’ or the ‘factory of the future’, in which companies will utilise many different IT sources, machines and providers to improve efficiency. “We are proposing this business processes oriented framework for supporting digitalisation also for factories,” outlines Woitsch. In particular there is the challenge of accompanying product delivery with the delivery of services like training, consulting or maintenance. This is what CloudSocket is doing with the broker. They are offering services in addition to the software, and it is expected that this trend will also grow more prominent in industry.
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