3rd International Workshop on
Business Process Management
Above and Below the Clouds (BPMC15)

at the
13th International Conference on Business Process Management (BPM 2015)
 

Summary

The BPMC15 workshop focuses on three closely related, yet distinct research topics:

  • the application or usage of cloud technologies in Business Process Management (BPM)
  • the application or usage of BPM technologies for cloud systems
  • process enactment in general, using cloud or other technologies

Submissions addressing either of the research areas are welcome.

Call for Papers

Outline

The Business Process Management (BPM) lifecycle is typically attributed to include at least the following phases: Design & Analysis, Configuration, Enactment, and Evaluation. While there has been tremendous progress in all these areas in the last decade, surprisingly little focus has been put on the technological side of process enactment – i.e., considerations on platform, architecture, and infrastructure – despite its obvious influence on all BPM phases.

There is a multitude of technical approaches to realize process enactment. Out of these possibilities, cloud computing has gained increased attention in recent years offering process enactment solutions. Cloud computing is a paradigm for the on-demand delivery of infrastructure, platform, or software as a service (XaaS). Cloud computing enables network access to a shared pool of configurable computing and storage resources as well as applications which can be tailored to the consumer's needs. Cloud resources can be rapidly provisioned and released, and are billed based on actual use, thus reducing up-front investment costs. Not only can individual services be hosted on virtual infrastructures but also complete process platforms. Further, besides benefits to run-time BPM, during design-time cloud-based services can enable collaboration between geographically dispersed teams and assist the design process in general - amongst others, Process Modelling as a Service removes the need for distribution and installation of software, and is thus more attractive for the occasional user.

In addition, there is a multitude of other technologies which could be applied to enact business processes, ranging from Peer-to-Peer (P2P)-based approaches to mobile BPM to common client-server architectures.

Given the high importance of cloud computing and process enactment, the number of publications from the BPM research community is surprisingly low. Consequently, this workshop focuses on two distinct aspects: First, applications and usage of cloud technologies in BPM and second, process enactment in general, i.e., using cloud or other technologies. Notably, all contributions to the field of cloud computing in BPM are welcome - we do not limit according contributions to process enactment using cloud technologies.

Consequently, the main goals of this workshop are:

  • To raise awareness about these black spots in BPM research,
  • to carve out topic areas and challenges, as well as the development of a research community with a specific focus on the technological side of project enactment,
  • to discuss and shape the future role of cloud computing for BPM.

At BPMC 2014, a number of open research topics were identified, which we hope will serve as inspiration. The open topics are described as part of the Preface of BPMC 2014.

Topics

Authors are invited to submit novel contributions in the above mentioned problem domains. We also invite people from the scientific workflow community to submit papers, so that the different communities can share insights and ideas.

Specifically, the relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

  1. BPM in the Cloud, e.g.
    • Automated service and virtual resource selection and allocation
    • BPM as a platform or software service
    • Business process modelling & analytics as a Service
    • Load balancing and scheduling of BPM engines/ processes/ process instances/ process tasks
    • Process mining in the cloud
    • Methods, tools, techniques to design cloud aspects of BPM systems
    • Monitoring of processes and process steps running in the cloud
    • Scaling of BPM engines/ processes/ process instances/ process tasks
    • Security, privacy, and trust in cloud-based BPM
  2. Concepts and theory for BPM enactment, e.g.
    • Change in BPM enactment
    • Compliance in BPM enactment
    • Flexibility, adaptability and evolution in BPM enactment
    • Security, privacy, and trust in BPM enactment
    • Socio-technical aspects of BPM enactment
    • Standards for BPM enactment
  3. Technologies for Process Enactment, e.g.
    • Ad-hoc and flexible processes
    • Cloud-based process enactment
    • Event-driven BPM
    • Mobile BPM
    • Peer-2-Peer BPM
  4. Use cases for BPM enactment and cloud-based BPM, e.g.
    • Best practices, success factors and empirical studies
    • New delivery models for BPM, application scenarios
    • Reports on use cases within companies and government
    • Requirements definition issues for use cases
    • Enactment and process mining

Paper Submission

The following types of submission are solicited:

  • Full paper submissions, describing substantial contributions of novel ongoing work. Full papers should be at most 12 pages long.
  • Short paper submissions, describing work in progress. These papers should be at most 6 pages long.
  • Use case submissions, describing results from a cloud-based use case. These papers should be at most 6 pages long.

Papers should be submitted in LNBIP format. Papers have to present original research contributions not concurrently submitted elsewhere. The title page must contain a short abstract, a classification of the topics covered, preferably using the list of topics above, and an indication of the submission category (Full Paper/ Short Paper/ Use case).

All workshop papers will be published by Springer as a post-workshop proceedings volume in the series Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing (LNBIP). These proceedings will be made available to all registered participants approximately four months after the workshops, while preliminary proceedings will be distributed during the workshop.

Papers can be uploaded via the submission system of BPM 2015. Please select the Track "3rd International Workshop on Business Process Management Above and Below the Clouds (BPMC’15)" when submitting your paper.

Important Dates

  • Deadline for abstract submissions: 29 May 2015
  • Deadline for paper submissions: 05 June 2015
  • Notification of acceptance: 29 June 2015
  • Camera-ready papers due: 20 July 2015
  • Workshop: 31 August 2015

Committees

Organizing Committee

Contact

s.schulte@infosys.tuwien.ac.at

Program Committee

  • Gero Decker, Signavio
  • Schahram Dustdar, Vienna University of Technology
  • Nico Herzberg, Hasso-Plattner-Institut für Softwaresystemtechnik GmbH
  • Jan Mendling, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien
  • Nicolas Mundbrod, University of Ulm
  • Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, University of Vienna
  • Philipp Leitner, University of Zurich
  • Srikumar Venugopal, University of New South Wales
  • Xiwei (Sherry) Xu, NICTA