Analysts

• Highly scalable and works in high-transaction throughput environments
• Helps create a common link between business requirements and technical implementation
• Eclipse-based development environment allowing for easy integration
• Works with any O/S for which a Sun-certified JVM exists
• Does not create inherent dependencies with operating environment
  

And the list contains not a single Product Weakness.

Butler Group is the IT end-user division of Datamonitor Plc., and a leading provider of IT research, analysis and advice. Founded in 1990, the organization is respected throughout the business world for the impartiality and incisiveness of its research and opinions. It covers every aspect of the increasingly important impact that information technology has on every organization, from technology selection decisions to developing effective high-level strategy and architectures.

True enterprise-class solution
The audit, titled “JRules 6.5 Business Rule Management System,” takes a comprehensive look at the market-leading BRMS. In summarizing its findings, Butler Group notes that ILOG JRules “has the added advantage of being a true enterprise-class solution in respect of run-time scalability and throughput. This latter aspect is one of its key strengths and a differentiator in the market that Butler Group believes will become more important as organizations realize that some of the higher level modeling tools and deployment options that are allied to these do not adequately answer the throughput requirements of a process-centric architecture.”

You can find the complete report on the Butler Group website at www.butlergroup.com.

IDC
JRules offers full support
IDC, the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets (www.idc.com), has released a new report on ILOG JRules, ILOG’s top business rule management system (BRMS).

Titled “Vendor Needs and Strategies: ILOG JRules 6.5,” the report begins with the assertion that the BRMS “market is being driven by the need for products that approach decisioning in a comprehensive manner, support full life-cycle business rules management, and address referential rule integrity (RRI).”

The authors of the report consider ILOG JRules in this context, and note ILOG’s consistent effort to provide a complete development and deployment environment for BRMS. The addition of Rule Team Server and Rule Scenario Manager further enables ILOG JRules to provide full business rule life-cycle support.

“JRules 6 is an evolutionary release for ILOG that builds predictably on past releases,” says Stephen D. Hendrick, group vice president for Application Development and Deployment Research at IDC, in a quote on the IDC website. “ILOG’s strategy is designed to ensure that JRules will appeal on many levels, thereby helping fortify its position as one of the leading BRMS vendors.”

New research from Gartner (www.gartner.com) officially recognizes the shift in the market from business rule engines to business rule management systems (BRMS). “The Anatomy of a Business Rule Management System,” by Eric Deitert and David W. McCoy, examines the value that comes from managing business rules, policies and scenarios through a BRMS.

“Just as the business process management (BPM)-enabling technology market is evolving into business process management suites, a similar shift is occurring in the rule market - a shift highlighted in this research,” begins the report. “Business rule engine (BRE) providers are evolving their products into business rule management systems (BRMSs), thereby adding a richer rule management ecosystem and providing functionality above and beyond that offered in the traditional BRE.”

The terms “business rule management system” and “BRMS” were coined by ILOG in 2002 to describe a new paradigm for automating decisioning in enterprise systems and empowering business users to author and update rules directly.

Powering leading suppliers

ILOG was selected from more than 1,800 companies that support dozens of industries across five continents. The selection process lasted six months and had logistics and supply chain professionals nominate vendors and service providers in recognition of their outstanding support. ILOG made the grade for its long-held objective of providing technology, logistics, transportation and consulting solutions to significantly improve its customers’ efficiency, services and overall supply chain performance.

“It’s an honor to receive this kind of appreciation from our customers,” says ILOG CEO Pierre Haren. “Over the nearly two decades of our history in the optimization and supply chain industry, ILOG has worked with more than 1,000 commercial customers to deliver robust planning and scheduling applications and optimization tools and engines.”

Learn more at www.supplychainbrain.com.

Offering more with LogicTools
ILOG strengthened its presence in the supply chain application market this year by acquiring LogicTools (www.logic-tools.com), a fast-growing leader in supply chain network design and planning solutions. LogicTools is an innovator in the emerging inventory optimization space, which industry analysts see as strategic and essential to the next generation of supply chain management applications.