2016-04-27

"Smart contracts" as an #BPM application - golden opportunity or not?

This blogpost was discussed at BPM.COM forum http://bpm.com/bpm-today/in-the-forum/do-you-see-smart-contracts-having-an-impact-on-bpm

Smart-contract is the current way to conduct the digital business. Everything is agreed up-front, just wait for actions, execute a payment. Because that everything is non-breakable by any of parties involved,  independent and mutually untrusted parties may conduct safely the business via smart-contracts.

Smart-contracts are explicit and machine-executable "simple" business processes at the level of the global digital economy. At the same time, smart-contracts covers only a happy path in their processes. The reality is more complex.

At present, BPM perfectly knows all traps and techniques for coordination of work and can successfully handle very complex processes (formal regulations, compliances, etc.). Also BPM is explicit, machine-executable and non-breakable but only at the level of individual enterprises

Can BPM delivery smart-contracts and enable enterprises for the global digital economy? Or will smart-contracts eat the current BPM areal be becoming more versatile? 

I think that BPM as a discipline already covers the smart-contract concept. But BPM as tools must adapt. Why?
  1. There is not commonly-agreed BPM terminology.
  2. There is not commonly-agreed processes and cases execution semantic.
  3. There is no commonly-agreed design-time APIs.
  4. There is no commonly-agreed run-time APIs.
  5. BPM, as a business technology, has not been architected yet.
All of these items are doable if there is the real willingness of BPM-suite tools vendors to collaborate. Or BPM can miss a huge business opportunity.

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