Cloud Oriented Business Process Outsourcing using Business Rule Management

The development of cloud services is rapidly transforming IT outsourcing. Highly standardized services are offered in elastic ways. Pricing models are shifting away from up front investments, allowing pay per use. In business process outsourcing (BPO), these business models are still less common and BPO services are often still implemented on a per customer basis, often heavily based on customer’s existing practices. This paper presents a framework for using the field of business rule management (BRM) to develop BPO offerings that exhibit cloud properties. The framework specifies ways in which business rules can be used to parameterize the different aspects of a BPO service. The framework is applied in three practical scenarios, which are evaluated for their cloud characteristics by interviewing experts from outsourcing customers, outsourcing suppliers and consultants.