RFID in Healthcare

These days Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is being increasingly used in a number of industries as a tool for integration. One of the fields where this technology is proving to be very useful is the Healthcare industry. RFIDs can be used to monitor the movement of the patient, administering the right medicines to the patients, also to monitor if the right patient is being operated upon or not. It helps track the supplies of medicines/blood samples before and after administering the dosage. Using RFID enables the hospital to track which materials have been used and whether the disposables have been discarded or not. This kind of tracking is possible for every single patient in the hospital.

Here is a video on the use of RFID in Healthcare:

Reference:

Youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClWo57oCpMM

Human Systems Integration

I happen to come across this article on Human Systems Integration (HSI). It seemed pretty interesting to me so I thought of exploring the topic a little further.

Human Systems Integration (HSI) is a multidisciplinary field of study composed of several basic areas:

• Human Factors Engineering
• Systems Safety
• Health Hazards
• Personal Survivability
• Manpower
• Training
• Habitability

HSI emphasizes Human considerations as the top priority in systems design to reduce life cycle costs and optimize system performance.

Human Systems Integration is gaining importance in the defense forces (the Air Force, the Navy and the Army). A lot of research is being conducted in these areas and also at NASA, as HSI is believed to provide a number of benefits such as minimizing the cost of ownership throughout a systems life cycle, provide human centered approach to acquisition, etc.

References:

http://www.nps.edu/or/hsi/

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-090115-062.pdf

http://human-factors.arc.nasa.gov/awards_pubs/hf101.php

Cloud Computing for B2B Integration

Here is a continuation to our presentation on B2B integration. This video shows how cloud computing can be used for B2B integration and It introduces the architecture 'Multi-tenancy' used while implementing cloud computing.

References:

http://home.messagexchange.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=56&Itemid=90

Presentation 2: B2B integration

Hi All,

We will be presenting our second presentation on tuesday (Nov 17).

As mentioned in the earlier post, we will start with an introduction on B2B integration and its basics. We will study the evolution of B2B integration and the need to have this idea around. We will analyze the data integration challanges in the retail industry and propose a solution for that. We will discuss few other attributes and technologies associated with B2B integration. We will discuss by analyzing the challaenges in the implementation of B2B integration and its relevance in the real world. Finally, we will take up a case of retail gian TESCO and see how it has used B2B to streamline its IT operations.

Here is our presentation:

Suggested Reading:

http://www.b2bintegration.co.uk/Getting_Started/b2bi_basics.htm

B2B Integration: A Practical Guide To Collaborative E-Commerce, Gunjan Satmani [BOOK]

http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/B2B_Integration

http://www-07.ibm.com/in/events/swu08/pdf/day2/keynote/xsw_preso_pete_murchison_keynote4.pdf

http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/b2b-integration.aspx

http://www.soberit.hut.fi/T-86/T-86.161/2005/B2Bi-final.pdf

J. Jung, H. Kim and S. Kang, Standards-based approaches to B2B workflow integration, Computers and Industrial Engineering 51 (2006)

http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/o2i/scenarii/Service%20Industry/ServiceIndustryBusinessCase4.pdf

https://doc.novay.nl/dsweb/Get/File-21651/D1.3.5v1.3%20B2B%20integration%20the%20playing%20field.ppt

http://www.sti-innsbruck.at/fileadmin/documents/teaching_archive/b2b05/B2B-IntroductionToB2B.pdf

http://www.cedar.com.tw/pdf/BlueStar%20Integration%20Server%202008.pdf

B2B Integration

Our Presentation on 17th November is on B2B Integration. The topics that would be covered are:

1. B2B Basics

2. B2B Evolution

3. Components of B2B

4. B2B in Retail Industry – Challenges & Solution

5. Styles of B2B integration

6. Benefits of B2B

7. Where is B2B implemented?

8. B2B Standards

9. B2B Technologies

10. B2B Security

11. Case Study - Tesco

References:

http://www.b2bintegration.co.uk/Getting_Started/b2bi_basics.htm

http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/B2B_Integration

http://www-07.ibm.com/in/events/swu08/pdf/day2/keynote/xsw_preso_pete_murchison_keynote4.pdf

http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/en/us/b2b-integration.aspx

http://www.soberit.hut.fi/T-86/T-86.161/2005/B2Bi-final.pdf

http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/o2i/scenarii/Service%20Industry/ServiceIndustryBusinessCase4.pdf

https://doc.novay.nl/dsweb/Get/File-21651/D1.3.5v1.3%20B2B%20integration%20the%20playing%20field.ppt

http://www.sti-innsbruck.at/fileadmin/documents/teaching_archive/b2b05/B2B-IntroductionToB2B.pdf

http://www.cedar.com.tw/pdf/BlueStar%20Integration%20Server%202008.pdf

ActiveVOS - Business Process Management System (BPMS)

We had few interesting presentations in class which touched upon Business Process Management. I found an interesting tool that allows individuals to create integrations and workflows where various system elements are combined to support well-defined processes.

Basics:

ActiveVOS is a Visual Orchestration System which uses BPEL 2.0 as the bedrock execution platform for the Visual Orchestration System, and includes support BPELforPeople and WS-Human Task for integrating humans into automated business processes. Orchestration tools allow individuals to create integrations and workflows where various system elements can be combined to support well-defined processes.

Target Users:

Development teams -- business analysts, developers and enterprise architects -- folks who need a Business Process Management Systems (BPMS) that delivers process applications quickly, easily and affordably.

Sample working screen:

Real world example:

Case study - Synovus Financial Corp

Synovus Financial Corp. is a diversified financial services holding company with more than $30 billion in assets, based in Columbus, Georgia. Synovus provides integrated financial services including banking, financial management, insurance, mortgage, and leasing through 35 banks, 440 ATMs and other Synovus offices in Georgia, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina and Tennessee. Long-term financial growth has placed Synovus in the top level of the high performers in the financial services industry for three decades. Synovus has grown from a $147 million one-bank holding company in 1972 to today's $30 billion diversified multi-state financial servicesprovider.

With such rapid and expansive growth, Synovus faced many integration challenges. The company is now using the leading visual orchestration system, ActiveVOS™, to integrate and manage multiple mission-critical applications as part of its servicesoriented architecture (SOA) implementation. The benefits so far? Reduced

integration costs through the reuse of architecture and services, a scalable platform, faster time to market and a higher degree of customer satisfaction.

FULL document : http://www.activevos.com/doc/aug2008-synovus-casestudy.pdf

References:

http://www.vosibilities.com/

http://www.activevos.com/index.php

http://www.activevos.com/bpm-bpms-bpmn-bpel-examples.php

http://bpel.xml.org/service/active-endpoints-visual-orchestration-system-for-execution-of-bpel-20

The Overlapping Worlds of SaaS and SOA

How SaaS and SOA will enable "IT as a Service"

As we get into more details of SOA, it would be interesting to know some of its functionality that overlaps with those of Software as a Service. Here's an interesting article by Vinay Singla which briefs us about these two concepts:

Software as a Service (SaaS) is getting a lot of attention these days. The concept of SaaS is not new and has existed for a while. It has been referred to by other names such as Application Service Provider (ASP), Managed service provider (MSP), on-demand services, cloud computing, utility computing etc. SaaS involves exposing applications over the network on a subscription basis with the pay-as-you-go model. This model was earlier popular with only small businesses who didn't want to invest heavily in their own IT departments, but slowly, this model is making its way into medium and large enterprises. SaaS offerings from companies such as SalesForce.com and Cisco WebEx have made this move up the chain possible. SaaS value proposition is now pretty clear to companies of all sizes and SaaS has become a crucial component of IT strategy for all companies.

Similarly, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is getting a lot of attention these days. Again, the basic concept behind SOA is not new and has existed for a long time. SOA basically involves exposing functionality from distributed systems in the form of stateless functions; this is similar to other distributed system architectures such as CORBA and DCOM. What is making SOA much more popular and prevalent than CORBA or DCOM ever did is the web services standards such as SOAP, WSDL, UDDI etc. Similar standards existed with CORBA and DCOM as well but were not open enough and led to vendor or technology lock-in. With web services, all the major vendors are behind the same set of standards, so there is a higher chance of interoperability between various systems and hence a higher potential ROI for SOA.

SaaS deployments are revenue generating businesses targeted directly at end users, whereas SOA deployments are usually created within IT environments and the services are exposed to other applications as opposed to end users. This way SaaS and SOA are very complementary in nature. In fact, they can't exist without each other.

What are the key elements of a SaaS platform? Every SaaS platform has to have a few core things in place, these are: multi-tenancy, ordering and provisioning, user authentication and authorization, service catalog and pricing, service monitoring, SLA management, usage metering, billing, invoicing and payments. Besides these core components, a SaaS platform also needs to support the usual business functions such as marketing, lead tracking, sales, customer support, revenue and financial management, partner settlement, business intelligence etc.

Now, let's take a look at the key elements of a SOA platform. A typical SOA platform deployment consists of service producers and consumers from across the enterprise. Service producers publish services via the SOA platform, which get consumed by multiple service consumers. There has been a lot of focus on the technical aspects of a SOA platform e.g. service bus, communication protocols (e.g. SOAP), service interface definitions (e.g. WSDL), service discovery (e.g. UDDI) etc. The importance of service monitoring, management and governance is also well understood, but this is not enough. In a typical large enterprise, the service producers and consumers could be applications or systems belonging to different departments, organizations or even subsidiaries within the enterprise. In such environments, services cannot be produced and consumed informally without proper service management in place since there is a cost associated to hosting and exposing a service by the service producer. In order to derive this cost, the total cost of operations or ownership (TCO) needs to be taken into account besides the cost to create the service. Also, there are security concerns around publishing the services openly. This leads to the need for service catalog management, provisioning, authentication, authorization, usage metering and cross-department charging. As highlighted before, these are also the core elements of a SaaS platform. So as an enterprise SOA deployment matures, it is suddenly in need of the core functions of a SaaS platform.

Let's take a look at the flip side of this. Every SaaS platform needs to support the ability to add new service offerings and modify existing offerings in the service catalog with minimal changes to the core platform components. These additions or modifications should not lead to creation of a whole new SaaS platform for every service. Instead, all the basic functionalities of the SaaS platform such as ordering and provisioning, authentication and authorization, service catalog and pricing, metering, billing and invoicing, payments etc should be reused for multiple service offerings. Such reuse necessitates the need for a SOA platform. Further, use of a SOA platform enables other advantages such as a more flexible and plug-n-play architecture leading to lower overall cost of ownership.

It is probably quite intuitive that most complex architectures including SaaS architecture will benefit from SOA capabilities, but a SOA platform needing SaaS capabilities is not that intuitive. There has been a lot of hype around SOA for a while but most SOA deployments in large enterprises have either not been successful or have not provided the expected ROI because the SaaS elements are missing in these deployments. In order to realize the full benefits of large-scale SOA deployments, it is essential to have a SaaS like service management functionality in place. This is where SOA and SaaS together can enable the concept of "IT as a service" and help take IT to the next natural step in its evolution.

References:
http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/?q=node/1047073

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service#SaaS_and_SOA.5B10.5D

Business Scenario: Human Workflow using IBM Websphere

Human workflows
Using WebSphere Business Modeler, IBM WebSphere Integration Developer, and IBM WebSphere Process Server, you can model a business solution, compose and assemble the solution, implement it, deploy it to a runtime server, and the administer it as part of your solution. You can continue to refine the model and the implementation iteratively. This scenario will help you plan the steps in this end-to-end process. It will also direct you to documentation that describes core tasks and helps you make good decisions along the way.


Description:
People play an important role in many of the different implementations of BPM systems. These human interactions can vary from a simple task-assignment process to a very complex business-process notification and task reassignments. Using IBM WebSphere Business Modeler, WebSphere Integration Developer, and WebSphere Process Server, you can model a human workflow, compose and assemble the solution, implement it, deploy it to a runtime server, and then administer the components of the workflow. This end-to-end scenario directs you to the documentation that describes the core tasks that are involved.


Business challenge:
Many enterprises are looking at ways to automate their business processes. However, total automation of business processes, while desirable, in practice is unachievable. This is because certain activities that require human judgment or human expertise, such as the manual handling of exceptional situations or the approval of requests, are always performed by people. Therefore, it is common for business processes to consist of a combination of automated steps and steps with human interaction. Often the human involvement in a business process is an area that is not maximized, and usually gains can be made quickly in improving productivity, reducing costs, and better utilization of knowledge.

Solution:
This scenario begins when a business analyst models a process, including the human tasks, in WebSphere Business Modeler. The business analyst can export the business process model directly into WebSphere Integration Developer. This direct transfer of information simplifies application development by shortening the time required to create a process application and ensuring the accurate communication of the business requirements for the application. While an integration developer works with the application in WebSphere Integration Developer, the business analyst can continue to develop and refine the model using WebSphere Business Modeler. The integration developer can accept changes completely or selectively. The development team uses WebSphere Integration Developer to implement the process. In addition, a Web developer can adapt the client user interface to meet the needs of the business users that work with the human tasks. They use both WebSphere Process Server and Business Process Choreographer Explorer to test and deploy the application.


Implementation highlights:

• Specify what to model.
• Use a business modeler to define the process model, including the human tasks.
• Use a publisher server to publish reviewed and approved versions of processes to which the wider enterprise can refer.
• Simulate the process to verify performance.
• Use an integration developer to integrate artifacts with the model.
• Use a process server to deploy the process.

Products:

1. WebSphere Integration Developer, Version 6.2
2. WebSphere Business Modeler, Version 6.2
3. WebSphere Process Server, Version 6.2

References:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/wps/library/

IBM® WebSphere® Process Server, Business Modeler

In my last post, I gave a brief overview on the IBM WebSphere Integration Developer. In this post, I am introducing the products IBM® WebSphere® Process Server and IBM WebSphere Business Modeler. These products together deliver a rich process integration platform for enterprise services based on SOA.

IBM® WebSphere® Process Server is a high-performance business process automation engine to help form processes that meet your business goals.
One of the biggest challenges for businesses is to have the agility to respond on demand to business processes. Unlike traditional integration methodologies, WebSphere Process Server allows you to respond dynamically to business demands and adapt to business conditions. This is accomplished with rich features like business rules, business state machines, and interface mapping. Its open standards-based services architecture allows clients to change underlying IT assets, with minimal impact on business processes. This orchestration of your business assets into highly optimized and effective processes will meet your business goals, whether you need to automate processes in the factory, process claims and financial payments, execute an efficient supply chain, or ensure compliance with the latest industry regulations.

Built on open standards, it deploys and executes processes that orchestrate services (people, information, systems, and trading partners) within your service-oriented architecture (SOA) or non-SOA infrastructure.

• Helps increase efficiency and productivity by automating complicated processes that span people, partners, and systems.


• Helps cut costs by enabling flexible business processes with reusable assets, reducing the need to hard-code changes across multiple applications.


• Extends value of core applications by centralizing business processes and sharing them across the enterprise to maximize resources and increase ROI.


• Strong support for human workflow and enables rapid process changes, providing the business agility required to compete in emerging markets by leveraging resources efficiently.


• Accelerates time to value by enabling rapid change and reconfiguring of existing IT assets without redeployment.

IBM WebSphere Business Modeler and WebSphere Business Compass

Business process modeling with IBM WebSphere Business Modeler enables you to visualize, document, model, and analyze business processes for understanding and process execution. IBM WebSphere Business Compass enables users to collaborate with stakeholders via a Web browser to translate business intent into process execution through strategy maps, capability maps, process models, and other BPM assets.
IBM® WebSphere Business Modeler is IBM's premier business process modeling and analysis tool for business users.

• It offers process modeling, simulation, and analysis capabilities to help business users understand, document, and deploy business processes for continuous improvement.


• Enables business users to design, model, and deploy vital business processes


• Allows users to make informed decisions before deployment through advanced simulation capabilities based on modeled and actual data


• Provides integrated industry content to help business users jumpstart solution development


• Accelerates process optimization by allowing users to visualize and identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies in processes


• Provides enhanced integration through role-based business spaces, a unified end user interface that integrates BPM content for a holistic management of business processes


• Enables subject matter experts to share models and collaborate to translate business intent into process models using a Web browser with WebSphere Business Compass

References:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/wps/

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/wbimodeler/

CIS 8020 Assignment 2 AS Google Charts

Business Scenario: Copsi Co. Strategy review

Beverage giant Copsi is having an organization wide strategy review with its stakeholders. Senior managers decide to perform a quick analysis on the organization's current market standing. Copsi’s board decides to perform sales studies based on geography. They have to find out the states where Copsi is the number one selling beverage. Then they have to find out the states where they have maximum sales so that they can focus on market retention.

Finally they plan to do some retrospective performance measurement on the maximum revenue contributing States (this data needs to be inferred for previous states). Looking at the complex nature of the problem they plan to hire Mavericks8020 consulting firm to perform this strategy review.

This requirement can be handled effectively wit the help of Google Chart API. As per our requirements we can take up sales data and provide it as an parameter to build up our required URL.

Google Charts API

The Google Chart API helps us in dynamically generating charts and graphs, and easily including these images in our webpage. Several types of image can be generated — line, bar, and pie charts for example.For each image type you can specify attributes such as size, colors, and labels. Including a Chart API image in any blog or website page can be done simply by embedding a URL within an img tag, in the same way you would place any image that’s hosted on the internet. When the webpage is displayed in a browser, the Chart API renders the chart or graph as a PNG-format image within the web page.

Google Charts Vs Other Charts

Our business scenario requires us to study the sales data on a geographical scale. We require that our data must be dynamic in nature so that we can perform further analysis on it. For building charts we could have used other visual editor tools such as MS Visio, Adobe dreamweaver and other graphic editors. Few points that make Google charts a clear winner are its dynamic capabilities and less programming overhead.

The advantages of Google Charts are:

• No additional software to install
• Ease of data import
• Cross-browser compatible
• Works on any platform that supports HTTP
• Google can serve our charts OR we can download and serve them ourselves

Fig 1: States where Copsi stands as the business leader

Fig 2: Copsi's Top contributing states:





Fig 3: Copsi's business volume for the years - 2006 /2009

References

http://code.google.com/apis/chart/types.html#maps

http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chart_API