Getting the message

Technological advances in electronic messaging services can help improve banks’ interoperability and overall business process management, explains Jon Siegel.

Today, every financial institution uses customized software to convert each and every transaction into internally useful data - a task costly in both time and resource, and dangerously prone to error. To overcome these problems, OMG's Finance Domain Task Force has developed the Model Driven Message Interoperability (MDMI) standard. It addresses message co-existence and interoperability directly, defining computer readable transaction data transformations or 'maps' that unambiguously define and preserve the business payload of any financial message regardless of its original protocol.

The MDMI's focus on message conversion allows continued use of legacy messages while simultaneously creating a process for smoothly introducing new message formats. It also means that financial information may be more easily moved from any format to any another. This new approach has the support of the largest and most important global financial networks.

An important additional objective of MDMI is support for ISO20022 (UNIFI). This initiative creates a common data dictionary of reusable elements. MDMI explains the technical details of how to map any message to the UNIFI dictionary. The procedure used is a 'hub and spoke approach' to message management where new message formats connect to existing ones without compromising either internal systems or message integrity. It also provides for faster SEPA compliance. To work, national or international standards bodies need only create and publish detailed conversion specifications using MDMI to avoid a myriad of bi-lateral conversions.

With the standard complete, OMG has fostered formation of the MDMI Consortium to allow the financial industry to share the costs of implementation and adoption via a dedicated, expert team working to provide proof of business and technical value. A functional demo was shown at SIBOS 2009. Initial participants include HSBC, SWIFT, and FireStar Software.

Business process models

If you work in BPM, you have probably either constructed a process model in Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) yourself or encountered a BPMN model in a project proposal or analysis. Specified originally by the Business Process Modeling Initiative, a group of the most skilled and influential BPM vendors and consultants, the standard and the group itself merged into OMG in 2005. Recognizing the merits of the specification and limitations of its status as a notation, OMG members set to work transforming it into a true modeling language with the ability to participate in the MDA, transfer models among different vendors' tools, and support execution.

BPMN 2.0, recently adopted, is the culmination of this effort. In addition to technical upgrades, BPMN 2.0 now supports modeling of collaborative processes and choreographies. Submitted and supported by most of the industry's top BPM vendors and consultants, BPMN 2.0 brings needed capabilities to this rapidly expanding enterprise practice.

A common thread in these and all OMG initiatives is the drive to optimize business operations and foster business innovation. While process automation yields the flexibility necessary to compete in today's rapidly-moving market, businesses need to move beyond this and employ technology to identify, measure, model and drive business change in order to obtain and maximize its impact on the bottom line. OMG's technology advocacy programs, led by our Business Ecology Initiative (BEI), help the Global 1000 organize to support best practice in integrating business and technology.

For more information, please visit www.omg.org

Biography

Dr. Jon Siegel, OMG's Vice President of Technology Transfer, heads OMG's technology transfer program with the goal of teaching the technical aspects and benefits of the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) based on OMG's modeling specifications UML, the MOF, XMI and CWM. Dr. Siegel comes to OMG after twelve years with Shell Development Company, the research arm of Shell Oil, where his last position was in the Computer Science Research Department. Siegel's background includes extensive experience in distributed computing, object-oriented software development, and geophysical computing, as well as theoretical and computational work done at Argonne National Laboratory.

OMG

OMG is an international, open membership, not-for-profit technology standards consortium. OMG member Task Forces develop enterprise integration standards for a wide range of technologies and an even wider range of industries including banking and financial services.

The Unified Modeling Language^TM (UML) is OMG's best-known and most widely used standard, enables powerful visual design, execution and maintenance of software and other processes as it supports specialized modeling environments in many specialized domains. Based on UML and OMG's foundational modeling technology, the Model Driven Architecture (MDA) carries enterprise applications from concept, through development, to deployment and maintenance, and ultimately to evolution as technology platforms advance. OMG's modeling standard for business - the Business Process Modeling Notation^TM (BPMN) - has just moved to Version 2.0.