BizRules Blog

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)

Business Rules Management and Business Rule Engines at a tipping point

Haley Rules was acquired yesterday by RuleBurst. Previously, RuleBurst seemed to position itself as an up-front rule modeling tool or rule management tool, especially for government applications, that integrated with the Microsoft Business Rule Engine for rule execution. With this acquisition, RuleBurst acquires one of the fastest rule engines on the block. Now they don't need the MSFT rules engine because they have their own! And instead of taking a few more years to build a stronger presence in the U.S., they established a strong presence in the US market overnight.

RuleBurst is a natural fit for legislative rules. As a matter of fact, they used to market their tool as Legislative Rulebase Technology years ago, when the company was called SoftLaw. They talked about the idea of Electronic Legislation. E-Government is a great niche, because government is good business.

Now it seems clear that RuleBurst is ready to go after the corporate / private-sector market just as hard. Ruleburst is very serious and methodical. They plan ahead strategies like international expansion (done), government rules market leadership (done - can you spell I R S?), and long-term expansion into the corporate rules market as well (well underway with Haley acquisition).

Adding the Haley Rules Engine could improve performance for deployment. Not sure what they would do with Haley Authority - that is very impressive natural language technology that is like nothing else on the market. There's a good reason Haley is based in Sewickley, PA: Carnegie Mellon University and A.I. expertise. Softlaw was one of the first companies to get into the rules market, and they are among the few who are still around today (under the name RuleBurst of course).

The new BRE Family Tree 2008 (as of yesterday) shows a quick summary of that history:

Here's the official press release about the acquisition.

Here's the rest of the story:

In September 2001 I met with a SoftLaw executive (not sure if he was CEO at the time or if he became their CEO later) in Orlando, FL to brief him on the U.S. rules market and advise them on their expansion plans and strategies. We talked about challenges faced by government agencies such as the IRS, and their search for business rule engines and business rules management solutions. At that time I was working for IBM on the IRS Modernization project. Back then the IRS was looking at CA AION, Sapiens, etc. It took a few years, but SoftLaw (RuleBurst) finally broke through and is now one of the tools used on the IRS project.

During those meetings we also talked about marketing opportunities in the US. I told them about the Business Rules Forum and other rules conferences that they should attend and exhibit at. They started attending, and are now regular exhibitors.

This year at the Business Rules Forum it was a little odd that Haley Software did not have a booth. Now we know why.

Posted by Ask Rolo at 04:30 PM Filed under BRE / BRMS Vendors, CEO, Haley | | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just got back from the Business Rules Forum in Orlando. There are lots of interesting changes going on in the market. Below is a quick summary (More to come later). I finally had a chance to meet some of the other bloggers in the BRMS BPMS BI space, like Sandy Kemsley from column 2 and Scott Sehlhorst from Tyner Blain.  James Taylor has left Fair Isaac and is now blogging about Enterprise Decision Management at the Smart Enough Systems blog. Check out those blogs for their take on many of the presentations.

This year BIZRULES was at the Agility Alliance booth.  The alliance has grown since last year when we focused on the business rules experts group. Now our scope includes rules, process, and knowledge management.  Agility Alliance members will start blogging soon over at http://agilityalliance.com/. 

Every year at the Forum I like to hand out what I call the BRE Family Tree. This year I didn't update it and, of course, many attendees stopped by to get the latest one. It's a good thing I did't update and print it yet, however, because it would have been obsolete by the end of the conference!

What's happened is that in the last few months, key mergers and acquisitions have taken place.  And vendors with new solid product offerings like Visual Rules are making waves and getting traction in the BRE market.  

And the pace seems to be quickening:

• In August, Trilogy announced their intent to acquire Gensym. As many of you know, Trilogy bought Versata last year. Trilogy's investment and committment to the BR market is impressive. The fact that Val Huber, one of the architects and founders of Versata/Vision Software is onboard and actively involved with their new direction tells me they are very committed to the BRE market.
• Just a few days ago, SAP announced plans to buy Yasu. That brings SAP into the BRE market.
• Recently, IBM acquired System Architect from Telelogic. Although not a business rule engine (BRE), SA is used on very large business rule enterprise projects as a rule/process modeling tool. How IBM plans to meld SA with their Rational sw modeling tools is still unclear, but something to keep an eye on.
• Haley Systems is undergoing a transformation. They were not at the conference this year, and the speculation was that they were or are about to be acquired. Nobody knows. I certainly don't, despite being a Haley services partner. Other Haley partners and customers I spoke with didn't know what was going on with Haley Systems either.

So, who would be interested in Haley? Here's what I think...

Continue reading "Leaves are falling off the BRE Family Tree" »

Posted by Ask Rolo at 05:15 PM Filed under Conferences | | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)