Combining Cloud-based Workflow Management System with SOA and CEP to Create Agility in Collaborative Environment

Abstract

1 IntroductionDuring its evolution, humanity always looked for instruments and innovative solutions that ensure maximum comfort from the perspective of human universe dimensions: familial, social, cultural, economic, religious etc. Many times during this social development, the individual had to resort to various association forms with others in order to achieve these goals, thus laying the foundation for what we call today collaboration. Current forms of association transcend the original goals and the individual aspirations have been altered and transposed into mercantile organization objectives. Unconditional support of these considerations is reflected by the capitalist system and largely by the industrial system, where the aim of earning money through all means outweighs any attempt of collaboration in the original meaning. Unfortunately the mercantilism is not only an economic doctrine of 15th-18th centuries, but it is still fully manifest in the digital society.Beyond these considerations, thinking of the social and economic status quo we must notice a change in the business paradigm. The traditional models defined through the goal of maximizing the profit adapt to modern management doctrines, oriented towards the individuals. Current society is not only information and knowledge based; it is also a society of technology and artificial intelligence. Transposing the business in the digital environment is no longer a caprice but a need. Additionally, the simple presence in virtual environment is not the premise for the success of modern business, the advantages provided by technology must also be fully exploited.Orientation towards exploiting individual abilities and ensuring business processes flexibility has led to what specialists call business agility. Ensuring a certain level of agility for the business requires more and more relying on information and communications technology. Additionally, the agile business status implies redefining the human resource as primary production factor. The anthropocentric paradigm is evidence to this. In the context of modern agile business collaboration and team work are more than ever necessary. Through the prism of dedicated agility technologies, the essence of collaboration as instrument for founding and unfolding economic activities dissolves into the business itself, becoming visible on the level of business processes and work tasks. The individuals, activities, processes and work tasks are vertices of informational graphs representing the functioning of modern businesses. The edges of these graphs are merely informational flows (later translated into workflows) that ensure communication and cooperation on business level for reaching its goals.For technological and economic reasons (meaning resource economy), the need to share resources, skills, competencies, market shares and experience overlays on top of these modern business architecture. In many occasions this was a premise for development of virtual organizations that take advantage of concrete market opportunities. The modern technological solutions is now provided by cloud computing. Together with a workflow management system (WfMS), cloud computing comes to ensure scalability, reutilization of technological capabilities, reliability, improvement of business processes, minimization of information and communications technology (ICT) investment.Thus, exploitation of cloud services may generate an intensified use of workflows, mainly for collaborative environments. On the other hand, business agility built on service-oriented architecture (SOA) and complex event processing (CEP) solutions may ensure real time collaboration between business processes through processing heterogeneous data extracted from business connected information flows. A solution of workflow management system based on cloud for real time collaboration will provide the capabilities for multi-criterion analyses for business processes, while considering their interdependence with the environment. …