European Business Rules Conference: Focus on Enterprise Agility

Press Release

5th European Business Rules Conference (EBRC) to be held from June 12 to 15, 2006 in London

LONDON - May 18, 2006 - For today's industries, flexibility is key: enterprises need to launch new products with new prices or have to adapt to changing regulation. Inflexible IT systems can lead to financial losses or even legal consequences. The fifth European Business Rules Conference (EBRC) is about the Business Rules Approach (BRA). Leading experts will show how enterprises are using business rules to react quickly to competition, regulatory compliance and other influences. The conference will be held from June 12 - 15, 2006 in London and features speakers from a wide range of organizations including: Butler Group, Dresdner Bank, SD Worx, the Dutch Traffic and Water Management Agency, Oracle, and the UK Ministry of Defence.

The only conference focused on businesses rules in Europe, EBRC 2006 will feature more than 30 experts - both customers and solution providers - who will present their experiences with business rules and discuss pragmatic solutions. Practical case studies on successful projects will have a major role in the conference. The programme offers tutorials and workshops for different skill and knowledge levels. Because of the broad applicability of business rule solutions, the conference is targeting business and IT managers across many industries, including banking, insurance, government, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, telecommunications and more.

Other conference topics of note include the latest news on development of business rule standards by the Object Management Group and the World Wide Web Consortium. The programme also includes sessions on business rules tools, platforms, techniques, methodologies and quality assurance. The conference is complemented by an exhibition of businesses rule products and related services. Following an enthusiastic response at EBRC 2005, the final day (15 June 2006) is supported by the OMG and specifically dedicated to regulatory compliance and related topics.

The Business Rules Approach
The Business Rules Approach (BRA) combines business rule technology and methodology to make business rules visible, readable and traceable for all. As part of the approach, an enterprise can free old business rules from legacy systems, allowing them to be more easily adapt to constantly changing conditions. Once rules are made explicit, a large proportion of them may be automated by employing a business rules engine or business rule management system (BRMS).

The Business Rules Approach has received significant interest from IT industry analysts. Forrester, Gartner and IDC are issuing new reports on BRMS as a new software category. An IDC report in November 2005 observed, "The BRMS market has experienced relatively high growth in the last several years, which is impressive given the lean growth observed by most application development and deployment tools." Gartner Dataquest in December 2005 indicated that "the total worldwide Business Rule Engine (BRE) software market experienced double-digit year-over-year growth from 2003 through 2004. " And in January 2006, the first Forrester Wave on Business Rule Platforms was released, noting that "interest in business rules platforms, as indicated by the volume of Forrester client inquiries on the subject and the high growth rates of most business rules platform vendors, is growing."

The appeal of business rule solutions is that they can address the challenges created by inflexible IT systems that cannot deal with change effectively. These rigid IT systems can cost European businesses billions of Euros because business rules are buried in software systems and can only be accessed with substantial effort, cost and delay. Organizations cannot react quickly enough, resulting in lost productivity, lost business, fines, or worse. The Business Rules Approach addresses these challenges by providing software and methodologies to help businesses extract, manage and automate rules.

Further details on the conference including the full programme and registration information may be found at www.eurobizrules.org.

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About the Conference

The European Business Rules Conference (EBRC) has been held annually since 2002 and is the only independent conference on business rules in Europe. After being held twice in Zurich and twice in Amsterdam, the conference takes place in London for the first time. Numbers have increased year-on-year by 20% and more than 200 participants are expected in 2006. EBRC addresses both business and IT oriented people and provides an independent and objective overview of technological and organizational innovations in the context of business rules. The conference is organized by Model Systems (UK), LibRT (Netherlands), and KnowGravity (Switzerland).

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Note to the editor:

For further information about EBRC 2006, or to be registered as journalist, please contact:

Silvie Spreeuwenberg
silvie@librt.com
+ 31 20 42 22 893.    

John Hall
john.hall@modelsys.com
+44 79 77 45 52 72  

Markus Schacher
markus.schacher@knowgravity.com
+41 44 43 42 000


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