What is “Cloud” BPM Adoption Model for BPM Processes deployment?

As commented in one of ours recent posts, by "BPM Adoption" we understand the way that some organizations have undertaken to relieve, optimize, automate and outsource part of their business processes, with the ultimate aim of achieving and maintaining the Operational Excellence that ensure them a sustainable competitive advantage.

To simplify our analysis, we have grouped the various strategies of BPM Adoption usually followed by organizations in four archetypal models, which we have called "Process Team", "Cloud", "Consulting" and "BPaaS".

Each model is characterized by the decision organizations have made in terms of the Mode of Development of the automation solutions, differentiating whether they do or plan to do by internal or external means; and the Mode of Operation of such automation solutions, differentiating if they do or plan to do either on internal systems (on-premises) or external (on Cloud or on an external Data Centre).

The “Cloud” model we analyze in this post is similar to the “Process Team” BPM Adoption Model already analyzed in a previous publication, but characterized by customers transferring the responsibility of supporting the service of the automation solutions to an external actor, the IaaS and PaaS provider. This model is described in the next figure:

Under this “Cloud” BPM Adoption Model, we categorize organizations that choose Development Mode internally (as it happens in the model "Process Team"), but progressing to an external Operating Mode of the developed applications, either:

•  In a Public Cloud (served by a data center) or using a cloud BPMS Platform, served by the BPMS Vendor, applying this case in small-medium enterprise or 
• In a Private or Hybrid Cloud or combination of Cloud and on-premises scheme, which occurs more in large companies and corporations.

 

For the basic applications (PaaS) the SaaS (Software as a Service) modality is the most popular option, if the corresponding software vendor provides them this licensing mode.

It appears here a new external actor, the Cloud Services Provider, which operates data centers in which hosts and operates servers; provide SaaS software services (usually no more than operating systems and databases); provides infrastructure of routers, firewalls, load balancers, servers, storage, backup equipment and other necessary equipment; and, moreover, manages the virtualization, high availability, monitoring and 24/7 support, communications and security, both physical and computer, all conveniently led to meet the most demanding SLAs (Service Level Agreements).

This type of services is growing exponentially and already operating in a 100 % "on-demand" and in the case of Public Cloud it has become de facto a "commodity"; first, by easiness of procurement, dynamic and flexible "on-line" management and almost immediate deployability of resources needed to support the client applications and, secondly, by the very high range, very competitive, of which are currently available on the market, leading to a significant cost reduction.

Therefore, under this model they are significantly reduced the system costs, both CAPEX (CAPital EXpenses) and OPEX (OPerating EXpenses), compared with the previous two BPM Adoption Models analyzed in previous posts.