BPMN and BPEL have become de facto standards for modeling of business processes and implementation of business processes via Web services. There is a quintessential problem of discrepancy between these two approaches as they are applied in different phases of lifecycle and their fundamental concepts are different — BPMN is a graph based language while BPEL is basically a block-based programming...

The goal of this paper is to summarize the state of the art in the area of model driven development approaches of service oriented architectures (SOA), which represent today’s standard for business integration. This paper outlines possible directions in development of SOA. We address the idea of automated transformation of a definition of a business process represented in Business Process Model...

Business process simulation is an important means for quantitative analysis of a business process. With the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) being the state-of-the-art language for the graphical representation of business processes, a variety of process simulators exist which already support the simulation of BPMN process diagrams. However, they do not provide well-defined interfaces ...

Business Intelligence (BI) promises a range of technologies for using information to ensure compliance to strategic and tactical objectives, as well as government laws and regulations. These technologies can be used in conjunction with conceptual models of business objectives, processes and situations (aka business schemas) to drive strategic decision-making about opportunities and threats etc....

With the advent of cloud computing, organizations are nowadays able to react rapidly to changing demands for computational resources. Not only individual applications can be hosted on virtual cloud infrastructures, but also complete business processes. This allows the realization of so-called elastic processes, i.e., processes which are carried out using elastic cloud resources. Despite the man...

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the patentability of business methods, contrasting the situation in lege in Europe and the situation in the US. It is...

The growth of China’s economy and paralleling that, its construction market, and the improved performance of Chinese construction firms in international market make the study of Chinese firms’ competitiveness a worthwhile endeavor. The aim of this paper is to review the relevance of Chinese military strategies in general, and Sun Tzu’s Art of War in particular to improve business competitivenes...

Integration and customization are increasingly becoming the dominant trends in the future of electronic commerce (e-commerce). Advances in networking, communications, and distributed computing technologies make it possible to better leverage internal and external competencies. E-business extends the consumer-centric e-commerce realm by including the business-to-business aspect of commerce. This...