Why Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)?
Digital transformation is center of strategy for many organizations. Every organization has unique challenges to implement their digitalization given their existing IT platforms, Legacy systems, cloud adoption. APIs (Application programming interfaces) provides way for many to integrate, connect & innovate old-new IT platforms, and capture data from various sources. Nowadays, APIs turning out to be one of the key decision maker in the acquisitions as APIs provide the infrastructure, to be able to build an ecosystem around their customers and products. APIs allow quick time to market for new business models and scale it fast by integrating apps quickly.
Role of Business Rules (IBM ODM) in APIs
Exposing Business valuable assets through an API to ecosystem of developers, customers, partners, opens up new opportunities for innovations, new revenue streams & expanded channels. APIs wider reach, allows businesses and its partners, channel most of the business transactions through API platform. These business transactions are bound to business policies. Business Rules Management System (BRMS) like IBM Operational Decision Manager (IBM ODM) allows the implementation of these policies into executable business rules. IBM ODM tool allows easy integration with API management platform & provide tools to support DevOps for continuous integration & Continuous deployment.
Benefits of BRMS
- Externalize & Centralize Business rules
- Increase the Line of Business control over implemented decision logic for compliance and business management.
- Empowers business teams to own & deploy business rules. Less dependency on IT.
- Rule Governance process guides day to day rule management activities
- Improves process efficiency
Business Rules Use Cases for APIs
- Channel specific dynamic behavior rules for client channels that vary across markets.
- Consistent validation of data coming through various channels
- Expose rules based business decisions externally as Open APIs like eligibility, Risk, pricing, compliance.
- Provide centralized location for list of managed decisions across the business to be easily examined for assets & governance purpose within enterprise APIs.
- For more business rules patterns please see link below
IBM ODM on Cloud (ODMoC)
IBM ODMoC offers dedicated ODM cloud environment for development, testing & production deployment on cloud. IBM offers monthly subscription based consumption which is very cheap & doesn’t need upfront investment on infrastructure & environments are managed/upgraded by IBM.
How IBM ODM supports Open API Specification
IBM ODM provides easier integration with API management. Tool provides automatic creation of Open API description (Swagger) for runtime decision services.
How IBM ODM supports DevOps
IBM ODM provides build and automation features to support DevOps.
Lightweight build command tool with Maven Support:
This new tool provides a command-line mechanism to build rule and Java projects into RuleApps without the need to install Rule Designer and Eclipse in headless mode. The ODM Build Command is available as an Apache Maven plugin that can be associated with your continuous build pipeline.
Using IBM UrbanCode:
IBM UrbanCode™ Deploy is an application release automation solution by IBM. The ODM plugin for UrbanCode™ Deploy allows you to integrate your ODM DevOps into a enterprise wide DevOps infrastructure. The plugin builds the decision services from Decision Center and then deploys the business rules to your runtime environment.
Learn more about how BRMS (IBM ODM , Drools, Pega DM) can help your organization or to schedule a demo please reach out to sales@perficient.com.
