EDITORIAL
By Pierre Haren, ILOG CEO

You'll notice a difference in the ILOG Connection. Along with a new look, the newsletter has adopted a new editorial direction.

You'll find we've let more light into the pages. This helps you navigate through the newsletter, and quickly find the important information we have to share.

For the stories, we're more customer-centric now. We believe the people best able to tell you the advantages of using ILOG products are the people who use them: our customers.

Connection reflects that effort. If you would like to be featured in a future issue, please contact us at connection@ilog.com.

			Jim Sinur Vice President and Research Area Director Gartner

Q: Why does Gartner feel that business rule engines and optimization are critical components, and what has been the response from customers so far?
We feel that a BRE [business rule engine] is a necessity for the ENS because of the tight interaction of the business logic, driven by rules, with the support of the ENS. We also feel that as the ENS picks up more functionality over time and evolves into a richer enterprise architecture, it will contain more business-sensitive rules. For the enterprise architecture to be agile, these business rules need to be accessible at a minimum to the application developers, and at a maximum, to the business user. The agility that rules provide can be enhanced with decision optimization technology.

Vendors have responded by telling us they are either building in business rule engines, or if they don't have one, they are talking about them. End users tell us that they are building their enterprise nervous systems "as we speak," and they are looking for BRE capability.

Q: Gartner recently conducted research on the business benefits of rule technology. It uncovered an ROI of 10 percent today in IT costs saved through the use of business rule technology. Where does this ROI come from?
In a world where rules are frozen in code, you have to perform system "surgery" to change rules. You save time in finding and changing the actual rules-this is where the ROI comes from. Also, business users performing rule changes contribute to the ROI, and this adds time-to-market advantages because of the ability to change the rules faster.

Q: How can IT managers quantify the value of the other benefits that rule technology brings, like agility?
It is the business people and their clients who will determine the value of agility, and this is measured by reduced time to market, decreased risk, increased value and reduced cost. We have several customer examples where business users could do business with their customers in new ways very quickly using business rules.

Q: Do you think the challenge lies in companies' not understanding the value of business rule management and the agility it can bring them?
I don't think businesses ever knew they had the option. There was always something in the way of achieving agility. First, they had to check the legal frameworks, then the accounting frameworks. The irony is that these are often the easiest things to change-the slowest thing to change was always the system. Using rules, this is going to be reversed so that the system is the easiest thing to change. If an executive gets a new idea, it won't be the systems that will constrain their thinking.

Q: Why do you think business rule manage-ment will become so important? What stage do you think we are in today?
Until very recently, rule implementation tended to occur a system at a time. When management makes a policy change, many downstream rules are affected, and you need to know where the rules are that are impacted by that change. Rule management will address this, while helping maintain the edge on agility for the whole organization, not just pieces of it.

We are just beginning to see the demand for business rule management becoming more important. For example, a year ago I received only a couple of inquiries relating to business rule management, and now I routinely get asked about it.