BizRules Blog

The latest BRE Family Tree update is here. There you can download the new family tree in jpg, png, or tif formats. We have redesigned the family tree to show a lot more information than before. To make the chart less commercial, we got rid of the colors that indicated which BRE vendors were BIZRULES partners. Now the chart can be used by anyone, vendor, salesman, consultant, or customer who wants to see "the state of the BRE market" or who wants a guide to help them select their BRE vendor.

This new diagram also shows the connection to Rete, CLIPS, Jess, and Drools. Rule engines that use the Rete algorithm have an "R" flag. Engines based on CLIPS have a "C" flag. and engines based on Jess have a "J" flag.

We also show what environments each rule engine runs on (i.e. COBOL, C++, Java, and .Net), and whether it runs natively on that environment. This section is still under construction. We've asked BRE vendors to confirm this information, so we can finalize this section. We planned to present this chart for the first time at the upcoming October Rules Fest conference in Dallas, TX.  But now that IBM and ILOG are uniting, I thought you would like to see this chart now.  If you are a vendor representative, please take a look at your product data and let us know if we missed anything or if you'd like to update your product information. 

This is a guide to many of the leading BRE vendors that we are familiar with. It is not an exhaustive or complete list - there are probably other BREs on the market and not on the list that we haven't even heard of yet. Let us know who you are!  This guide is a good start for companies trying to evaluate and assess the BRE market. 

If you need more information about these BRE vendors, or if you need help selecting the best and the right rule engine for your particular needs, call BIZRULES at 305.994.9510. Some of you have asked for the BRE Family Tree poster... Call us for info about that.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 07:31 AM Filed under BRE / BRMS Vendors, FIC, IBM, ILOG, PEGA, Predictions | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

IBM is one of the few companies that sets the course in technology. Now they will use ILOG to steer the ship.

IBM has announced their intention to buy ILOG for $340 million USD. ILOG is widely recognized as one of the leading BRMS software vendors.

This move helps legitimize business rules management systems (BRMS) and rule engine technology. This will shake up the playing field in the BRMS/BRE space as ILOG BRMS competitors aligned with and partnered with IBM will need to rethink their strategy and technology.

Integrating ILOG BRMS with IBM's BPM and SOA technologies will also raise the bar in the BPM/BRMS space. Pegasystems has been a leader in the BPM/BRMS space, which Pega basically invented, ever since they released their PRPC PegaRULES Process Commmander product. BPM vendors lacking BRE capabilities are going to have to start OEMing a BRE tool, building one, or buying one like IBM did.

This move also speeds up the BRMS market consolidation that has been picking up steam in recent years. Last year SAP acquired the Yasu rule engine, and Ruleburst (previously SoftLaw) acquired Haley Rules. Prior to that, of course, Fair Isaac acquired RulesPower, and Trilogy bought Versata then Gensym. Going further back, CA bought Platinum Technology (which had acquired AION and the AION BRE). AION, of course, was started by a bunch of ex-IBMers, who wanted to improve on IBM's TIRS (The Integrated Reasoning Solution) mainframe rule engine, who left IBM to develop the AION rule engine. After TIRS, IBM began working on Common Rules. That IBM rule technology and research effort could be combined with ILOG's BRMS tool in the future.

IBM also plans to embed ILOG rules technology across its broad product offerings, further strengthening their products and further legitimizing rules technology.

The business rules market is alive and well. The tools are getting better. The vendors are getting larger. The methodologies are getting easier. As rules-based tools become more widely adopted, companies will be able to spend more time designing quality rules and managing effective rules, and less time worrying about the rule engine technology under the hood.

Companies that resisted rules technologies and methodologies in the past almost missed the boat. Now they have another chance to get on board the rules express.  IBM is ready to rule again.

See also:

• http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24740.wss
• http://bizrules.info/weblog/2008/07/bre_family_tree_update_shows_i.html
• http://www.cnbc.com/id/25880889/for/cnbc
• http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/IBM-to-Buy-Ilog-for-340-Million/
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9456

Posted by Ask Rolo at 04:17 PM Filed under BRM (Rule Mgmt), FIC, Haley, IBM, ILOG, Mergers, Predictions | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Dallas Rules Group is organizing a technical rules seminar, October Rules Fest, on October 22-24, 2008 in Dallas, TX. They are bringing together for the first time in one place the inventors and originators of key rules technologies and methodologies such as:

• Dr. Charles Forgy, inventor of the Rete algorithm that drives many of today's leading Business Rule Engines such as ILOG, Fair Isaac, and Haley
• Dr. Dan Levine, noted AI/Neural Net scientist
• Daniel Selman, software architect and ILOG JRules Rule Studio team lead
• Edson Tirelli, Drools/Red Hat
• Gary Riley, co-author of CLIPS (where Inference/MindBox and Haley Rules originated)
• Greg Barton, TEKsystems 
• James Owen, KBSC, rules guru, consultant, noted author, and visionary
• Larry Terrill, EBDX.com
• Mark Proctor, co-author of Drools
• Michael Neale, Drools/Red Hat
• Dr. Richard Hicks, noted Validaton and Verification sicentist, creator of EZ Xpert, Texas A&M Univesity
• Rolando Hernandez, Chief Rules Architect, BIZRULES and creator of the VISION business rules methodology 

The seminars and presentations will be ideal for both CTOs, technical architects with rules experience, and developers new to business rules development. There will also be tutorials and introductions to business rules architecture, technologies, and methodologies for CIOs, managers, and analysts who want to learn why knowledge and rules matter.

Dallas Rules Group is a new business rules user group formed in January 2008 by folks interested in business rules architecture and development, knowledge acquisition, knowledge representation, knowledge engineering, AI (artifiical intelligence), expert systems, and enterprise rules integration.

This will be a technical seminar for technical people.  For those interested in the business side of rules, join some of our distinguished speakers the following week in Orlando, FL at the 11th International Business Rules Forum.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 09:27 PM Filed under BRM (Rule Mgmt), Conferences, ILOG | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Business rules triggered by Eliot Spitzer's suspicious money transfers led to his resignation as Governor of New York..

The Justice Department says Spitzer is likely to be charged with a relativley obscure statute or rule called "structuring". Even people who know the rules break the rules. It all started a few months ago when a bank in New York followed the rules for filing a Suspicious Activity Report. It ended with his resignation last week.

To help understand the rules that "fired" Spitzer, we created an interactive business rule model of SAR rules. The rules are on www.RuleMap.com. This is a new website we created for demonstrating our interactive BIZRULES® RuleMap™ rulebooks and business rule models.

A picture is worth a thousand words. We beleive this RuleMap makes it easy to understand the rules that Spitzer broke.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 01:38 PM Filed under Business Mistakes, CEO, Compliance (SOX, etc.), RuleMap | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Documenting business rules is a good first step on the path towards the business rules approach.

But sometimes that's not enough.  Taking the next step and getting to the next level requires simulating business rules so they are easy to review and verify.

Over the past few months BIZRULES has been working on a new product that lets us do both. It's a visual tool that lets us not only draw diagrams of business rule models, it also lets us simulate the rule logic. This tool helps us speed up the rules harvesting process and improves the quality of our rulebooks.

BIZRULES® RuleMap™ is an interactive rulebook that models business rules and simulates business logic.  This logical model lets you see how your business rules really work. It lets you visualize the Reasoning Chain™ that leads to smart conclusions and right decisions.

We use this tool to document your business rules independent of any BRE - yet it can be implemented using any BRE. Again, this is a logical model of your business rules.  It can be used as the rulebook or specs for authoring the rules in any BRE.

Take a look at a sample RuleMap. And let us know what you think. Contact us for pricing or a web demo.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 02:03 PM Filed under Analyst, Architecture, BIZRULES, BPM (Process Mgmt), BR 101, BRE / BRMS, BRE / BRMS Vendors, BRM (Rule Mgmt), Best Practice, Business Domain / Industry, Decisioning, FIC, Haley, IBM, ILOG, InRule, Lessons Learned, MSFT, PEGA, Press Release, Rule Examples, RuleMap | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

10,000 baby boomers are retiring today.

10,000 more will retire next Monday. And Tuesday. And so on. That's the way it's going to be for the next 20 years. Key personnel and subject matter experts with 20 to 30 years of experience are going to clear their desk and head down to Florida. As they walk out the door, invaluable corporate knowledge will simply disappear.

Intellectual capital, a vital corporate asset, will melt away unless companies do something to stop the brain drain and to retain critical knowledge.

Visible Knowledge LLC (www.visibleknowledge.com) has a solution:

• An interactive RuleMap™ that models business rules & simulates business logic
• An interactive Expertise Blueprint™ that transforms knowledge into Visible Knowledge™
• A Legacy Interview(sm) 

Visible Knowledge helps companies retain vital corporate knowledge before it melts away. They focus on documenting invaluable critical knowledge from your top domain experts and key personnel, before they retire. It can take companies years and millions of dollars to recover from losing this type of knowledge.

A traditional exit interview is just not enough when you're dealing with subject matter experts or super experts. So Visible Knowledge has developed a Legacy Interview(sm) process that extracts and documents critical knowledge before experts leave or retire. They use a rapid knowledge acquisition process to extract maximum amount of knowledge in a minimum amount of time. Visible Knowledge focuses on capturing critical knowledge.

If Know It All Ken just gave you two weeks notice, and he's the only one who knows how to fix the $5 million widget making machine, Visible Knowledge can help. They can spend a few days with Ken and document the crucial knowledge you need to keep the business running.  

If Super Expert Sally is retiring in a few months, Visible Knowledge can spend a few weeks with her to elicit as much vital and critical knowledge as possible before she leaves.

If your entire Dept of Super Experts is retiring next year, Visible Knowledge can work with your team over the next few months or years to document the critical knowledge you need to retain.

Later, if you need to automate the knowledge that was captured and retained, companies like BIZRULES can help you do that. BIZRULES works with leading knowledge software vendors to design and build knowledge-based and rule-based solutions.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 12:42 PM Filed under A.I., BIZRULES, BRE / BRMS Vendors, Benefits / ROI, Brain Drain, Business Domain / Industry, CEO, CIO, Challenges, Compliance (SOX, etc.), E-Commerce Rules, Energy, Oil & Gas, Expert System, Health & Life Insurance, Healthcare, KM (Knowledge Mgmt), P&C Insurance, Press Release, Pricing & Discount Rules, Retail Rules, Revenue Recognition, SME | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lots of changes going on at BizRules lately. We've been in stealth mode in the last few months building new products and tools for rule harvesting, enhancing the VISION™ Business Rules methodology, winning a few large projects, and hiring. Time to roll back the curtain and introduce...

The BizRules.com website has a fresh new look. The top level pages are designed for quick reading and briefing readers on the products and services we sell. If you want to see more details, many of the links take you to the "classic" website containing more detailed information. Over time we'll refresh and modernize those pages as well.

BizRules.info, the Business Rules Knowledge Base, is where we show and tell you what you need to know about rules. We're redesigning that site and will launch that in the next few months.

I'd like to ask you a question: What information would you like to see in the business rules knowledge base?  Please contact us with your suggestions or ideas so that we can improve the site for everyone interested in business rules techniques and technologies.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 12:03 PM Filed under BIZRULES, Blog | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)