The Multi-Tenant Extension of Traditional Business Process Management Systems to Support BPaaS

Authors

  • Dongjin Yu Hangzhou Dianzi University
  • Jiaojiao Wang Hangzhou Dianzi University
  • Jianwen Su Department of Computer Science, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbar, USA
  • Binbin Huang Hangzhou Dianzi University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23055/ijietap.2016.23.4.2803

Keywords:

business process management, business process as a service, jBPM, activiti, multi-tenant

Abstract

BPaaS, or Business Process as a Service, is an advanced model of SaaS in which the Business Process Management System is deployed as a shared, centrally-hosted service without the need for users to deploy and maintain additional on-premise IT infrastructure. BPaaS leverages economies of scale and isolates the process management from domain business, by serving a large number of tenants. In this paper, we present an architectural design of a BPaaS system and its two implementations, called jBPM4S and ActivitiEx respectively. These extensions of two well-known open-source Business Process Management Systems, i.e., jBPM and Activiti, provide generic and unified process management services that are unrelated to specific business operations invoked on demand by tenants. To accomplish this, the extensions cleanly separate the business data from process execution to isolate tenants. An extensive case study is presented to demonstrate the usability and efficiency of the extensions, and difference with the traditional BPMS approach.

Author Biographies

Dongjin Yu, Hangzhou Dianzi University

Dongjin Yu is currently a professor at Hangzhou Dianzi University. He received his BS and MS in Computer Applications from Zhejiang University in China, and PhD in Management from Zhejiang Gongshang University in China. His current research efforts include business process management, software architecture and Big Data. He is especially interested in the novel approaches to constructing large enterprise information systems effectively and efficiently by emerging advanced information technologies. He is the director of Institute of Computer Software of Hangzhou Dianzi University. He is a member of ACM and IEEE, and a senior member of China Computer Federation (CCF). He is also a member of Technical Committee of Software Engineering CCF (TCSE CCF) and a member of Technical Committee of Service Computing CCF (TCSC CCF).

Jianwen Su, Department of Computer Science, UC Santa Barbara, Santa Barbar, USA

Jianwen Su received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Fudan University and Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Southern California. He joined the Department of Computer Science at the  University of California at Santa Barbarain 1990.
Dr. Su is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and SIGMOD, and a senior member of the IEEE and Computer Society. He served/is serving on program/organizational committees of many database, services computing, and BPM conferences/workshops: as program committee (co-)chair (PODS 2009, WS-FM 2009, MDM 2007, etc.), as a program committee member (PODS/EDBT 2015, ICSOC/BPM 2014, ICDT 2013, etc.), and as an organizer (general co-chair for ICSOC 2013, workshop chair for BPM 2010, general chair for SIGMOD 2001, etc.). He gave keynote speeches at various workshops/conferences (WS-FM 2013, DAB 2013, ICSOC 2012, etc.). He was a member of the ACM SIGMOD Executive Committee (2003-2007) and PODS Executive Committee (2008-2011). At the University of California, he served on the UC system-wide senate committees on International Education (UCIE, 2006-2008), Research Policy (UCORP, 2010-2012), and many committees of the UCSB Academic Senate.

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Published

2016-12-19

How to Cite

Yu, D., Wang, J., Su, J., & Huang, B. (2016). The Multi-Tenant Extension of Traditional Business Process Management Systems to Support BPaaS. International Journal of Industrial Engineering: Theory, Applications and Practice, 23(4). https://doi.org/10.23055/ijietap.2016.23.4.2803

Issue

Vol. 23 No. 4 (2016)

Section

Special Issue: 2015 Asian Pacific Conference on Business Process Manangement

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