When business process, semantics and search collide

As more and more server and desktop applications migrate to the cloud, there is great opportunity to take old, worn metaphors and functionality and re-invent them in lighter, faster, more usable ways.  A few search vendors are already preparing for this evolution by offering architectures and tool sets to build these applications -- Exalead offers a smart take on what they call search-based applications, or SBAs, and Google just announced a business version of their App Engine. And I am sure that others will soon follow.

But something important is missing:

A business process is usually baked, or hard coded, into the application that supports it (with a slight amount of configuration tolerated), so the challenge has always been how to tie disparate applications together into a unique, business-required flow. For example, a process may flow from the SFA app to a pricing spreadsheet to a CRM app, but there is no common connector other than the process or expertise.

Sure, BPM and workflow software can sometimes do this, but it is expensive, complex, time consuming to implement and ultimately only works for processes and flows that are precise and reoccurring. They do little to support "knowledge" or ad hoc processes. And certainly traditional BPM/workflow systems do not offer the kind of flexibility and usability that can fully leverage the benefits of the cloud.

So who can effectively bring a business process sensibility to the cloud and search-based apps? It's a good question, as process folks are too rigid to accept the ad hoc nature of search, and search folks will not like the structure and rules that process requires to be successful. But whoever figures it out will have a killer platform.

The key to this convergence, by the way, will be semantic technology. Think of it this way --  business process, at its essence, is simply a set of rules around how around how words are displayed and connected. The purpose, of course, is so that individuals within a group can come to agreement as to what it is they do, should do or want to do, and agreement to the methods they will use.

I'd like to walk through a example that may provide some insight on how process could be effectively incorporated into search applications.

Let's begin with a simple, traditional process model. What this says, basically, is since a birthday is occurring (the input), there is a need to bake a cake (the activity).  A baker (or actor) will follow a recipe (a guideline or rule), using available ingredients (material) and an oven (a tool or system) to produce a cake (output). This process could be decomposed into its parts, or sub-activities, such as "Select Recipe," "Purchase Needed Ingredients," "Make Batter," and so on.

Traditionally, this representation would be used for reference (here's how we prefer to do it), or it could be automated into a workflow (you cannot bake a cake unless you have a birthday occurring within the next two days).  But try looking at it like this:

Each component of the process is really just a part of a larger entity or repository of common types, that in the case of baking a cake, happen to fit together like this. Certainly each component can play many different roles at different times. This notion of a distributed process environment is exactly what will work in the cloud. Process definitions become metadata and fuel for rich semantic queries that can tap multiple repositories when needed, retrieving and assembling components on demand into an interface that is meaningful to a user at a precise point in time.

What's cool about this is a business process can be enabled from many places -- from a document, from an email, from a user profile on a social network.  Since any component of any process is aware of its role across many processes, users are able to engage in typical ad hoc behavior but will always be a click away from greater process rigor should they want it or the business require it.

This also means that the ability to "model" or define a process needs to fast, easy and human, something most BPM and workflow tools most definitely are not.