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Almost a year has passed since IBM announced its planned acquisition
of ILOG, the company behind the JRules business rules management system
(BRMS) and other embeddable software such as the CPLEX mathematical
optimization module licensed for use in many supply chain management
systems. The acquisition was finalized in January, and this month ILOG
came out with a flurry of IBM-flavored announcements.
On a branding level, I'm now being directed to refer to the business
rule products as IBM WebSphere ILOG JRules 7.0 and IBM WebSphere ILOG
Rules for .NET 7.0.
Funny, I notice that the WebSphere branding isn't laid on as thick
on the ILOG website as in the press release from IBM, which makes sense
given that ILOG had existing customers running its rules engine on
other app servers. But IBM clearly wants to use the capabilities JRules
brings to the table to strengthen the WebSphere platform, which
previously had some BRMS capabilities of its own but was often sold in
conjunction with the ILOG product.
The product managers say future releases will also push for parity
of features between JRules and Rules for .NET. Right now, JRules has
more capabilities as the more mature product. On the other hand, the
.NET version boasts an integration with Microsoft Office and Sharepoint
Portal aimed at making it easier for business users to browse and
modify business rule definitions. Retrofitting that capability onto
JRules is still on the to-do list.
The idea behind BRMS is that it makes sense to store and manage the
key rules that run your business in a separate repository, rather than
having them intermingled with other programming code, for the same
reason you store your key data in a database management system rather
than a data store tied to one specific application. A simplistic
example of a business rule would be something like, "For every consumer
order over $500, give a 5% discount."
As a discipline, BRMS also helps keep business rules more crisply defined.
The briefing I got on the announcements also made a connection with
IBM's Smarter Planet marketing campaign, which emphasizes the degree to
which building computerized intelligence into our business and
government processes can help build a better world. One specific ILOG
tie-in is an updated supply chain application, IBM ILOG LogicNet Plus
XE 7.0, which among other things can be used to model the "carbon
footprint" implications of a supply chain design. This can help tease
out some counter-intuitive conclusions, such as those cases where it
might make more sense to ship goods internationally on fuel-efficient
cargo ships than to ship locally on relatively inefficient trucks. ILOG
also announced IBM ILOG Plant PowerOps 3.2, an update to its solution
for optimizing power plant operations.
Another significant feature of LogicNet is its ability to analyze
the global tax implications of a supply chain design, something I'd
encourage you to discuss in our Global CIOs forum.
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