What are Business Processes?

When we demo Serverless360 BAM feature to our potential customers, one of the frequently asked question is "What is a Business process and how it relates to integration service components?". Answering this question is vital as pricing of Serverless360 depends on it and In this small writeup, we will try to address this question.

Business Process

Nowadays we see different types of integration solutions.

On-premises solutions: These solutions make use of BizTalk server on-premises connecting to various application and customers.

Azure only solutions: These solutions typically make use of Azure Integration Services such as logic apps, service bus queues, event grid, APIM, Event Grid

Hybrid integration solutions: These solutions make use of both Azure integration solutions and BizTalk server on premises.

Regardless of the type of the integration solutions or the technology behind, they are serving a key tool for the business process for an orgranization. Consider an example of a logistics company ShipAnyWhere, it will have many integrations with the carriers. These interactions can be Booking Request, Booking Confirmation, Shipping Instructions, Milestone Status etc. All these transactions come together and form a Logistics Business Process for ship Anywhere.

In Serverless360, the business process can be modeled exactly the way depicted in the picture above. Picture below shows Serverless360 configuration for ShipAnyWhere Logistics business process.

Frequently asked questions on Business Process

Can I onboard an unlimited number of customers on a single business process

Yes. You can onboard an unlimited number of customers or trading partners under same business process. The customer name or Trading partner name will just be one of the tracked field in those transactions.

I have multiple Logic Apps for each of the trading partner, but all of them process name business transaction. Can I bring all of them into same transaction
Yes. As a transaction name can be mapped to transaction name in configuration, you can bring multiple receive locations, orchestrations or send ports into single transaction.

Can I bring different actions from different Logic Apps into same business process
Yes, Since its just the mapping between the names you configure, it is possible to bring processing elements from different biztalk applications.