SOA, Business Intelligence and Business Rules

An interesting entry caught my eye on CBDI today - COMMENTARY - SOA FRAMEWORK FOR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE. One key idea in this article is around business rules:

We still remain firmly of the opinion that real time control is one of the most interesting aspects to SOA, and of course some enterprises are just starting to dip their toes into this particular pool as they use mediation services together with rules engines to monitor key metrics and measures.

Now this is clearly one of the main uses of business rules in an SOA/Business Intelligence architecture. However there is a broader use, that of deciding what to do about this metrics/measures - taking action. This use of business rules not just to monitor and aggregate/dis-aggregate but also to act is key to the enterprise decision management approach. It is not enough to decide that something should be done, in a real-time 24x7 world you must act appropriately and immediately - you can't wait until you can tell someone. Business rules management systems, combined with predictive analytic models that deploy insight into operational processes, are ideal for this decision automation.