What Is BPM if you know EAI?

Overview of BPM & EAI

The overall goals and intent of BPM and EAI are very different:

BPM: Define, model, and execute a company’s business process from the top down (i.e. starting with Business Analysts) and then connect to external systems.

EAI: Define and implement data integration and data movement between external systems (applications, databases, etc.) from the bottom up (i.e. starting with IT personnel).

Both BPM and EAI have the concept of "process". For BPM, business process is the central purpose of the deployed application. For EAI, a process may emerge which can govern how the data integration between external systems proceeds.

Business Processes vs. Integration Processes

A BPM implemented business process describes and documents how a company’s business objective is achieved and drives the business process execution to the end users performing tasks. It reduces the time and cost of executing the process by automation (deployed application) and enables improvement of the process over time and reacts to changes in business conditions.

An EAI system ensures data and transaction integrity over multiple systems, but does not provide an end-user application to the business. It may implement a process description which handles complexities of system to system data integration.

Participants in Business Processes Are Different To Participants in EAI Processes

BPM: Many steps in business processes are performed by human performers. Human workflow is an integral part of a business process and the specification of human performers in business processes can be complex.

EAI: Steps in integration processes are performed by systems while human performers are exceptions.

Combining BPM & EAI

Despite different purposes, BPM & EAI are often used together in implementations. There are two ways BPM can access system information essential to the business process: (1) via BPM’s own managed adapters and; (2) via EAI furnished message bus or interfaces

EAI would be used when: (1) a large number of external systems must be integrated into a more manageable scheme and/or; (2) data translation, data transactions, and data movement between external systems is high volume and/or high complexity.

BPM and EAI execute their processes in different ways

A business process is active for a long time while an integration process is completed in few seconds. Therefore BPM and EAI have different recovery, versioning and monitoring requirements. Human performers are very important in business processes, therefore response time for BPM is more important than data throughput. Generating human interfaces easily is more for BPM while data transformation is more important for EAI.