In thanking everyone for joining in the conversation at DIALOG 08, Jean-François Abramatic, ILOG’s Chief Product Officer was reminded of the second World Wide Web Conference that he attended in Chicago in 1994.

In the closing session of that event, the attendees were invited to debate the question of whether or not a physical conference was actually needed any more. After all, we now had the Web and email, so…

After a follow-up paper vote on Monday, the most popular presentation selected for Irv Lustig’s last Opti session of the day was “Writing Better Mixed Integer Programming Models.”

I suspect Irv organized a second vote because he wanted to avoid having to give the “Introduction to ILOG CP Optimizer” presentation which actually won the original electronic vote. Whether or not there was any vote-rigging involved, I don’t know, but I…

It was another working lunch today. I sat in on James’ “lunch and learn” session to hear him sharing feedback from the event and discussing best practices with about a dozen or so customers and ILOGers. Below are a few snippets from the informal discussion.

James was blogging the BRMS track throughout the conference and you can find more insights and commentary in his Live from DIALOG series over on his…

In this session, Prasad Saraph from Bayer Healthcare’s Biotech Pharmaceuticals Division provided a fascinating insight into the supply chain issues that Bayer faces in producing one of its key biotech pharmaceutical products.

Kogenate is a leading treatment for hemophilia-A, a genetically transmitted condition that prevents blood clotting and affects 400,000+ people worldwide.

Prasad began with some startling figures: 1,600 employees in 15 manufacturing plants work continuously throughout the year to…

James R. Reid, senior director of technology—Analytics, Equifax

James covers how ILOG’s BRMS is integrated into Equifax InterConnect. InterConnecct is Equifax’s decisioning platform which automates credit and lending processes.

Some points from James’ presentation:

For rule development, typically the business requirements come in from the business user/analyst. Within the rules studio Equifax have their own custom plug-ins on top of the BRMS. For instance, a BOM plug-in to verbalize all BOMs.Equifax…

In this session, Ian Isaac and his colleagues from aigdirect.com described how they use ILOG BRMS and a Service Oriented Architecure to ease the process of integrating mergers and acquisitions into their IT infrastructure.

In the insurance industry, mergers and acquisitions often leave companies with multiple systems for billing, claims and policy administration that tend to fragment processing and impede growth and change management.

ILOG BRMS’s enabled aigdirect.com to face…

Allen Fahden only carries two dollar bills*. Why?

He uses the question to gather feedback from the audience and explore different people’s approaches to innovation and change. He’s quick to point out that there are no wrong answers to the question and hands out two dollar bills to everyone who makes a suggestion. Because two is better than one? Because two dollars is worth (slightly) more than a euro? Because…

Daryl Plummer, group vice president and Chief Gartner Fellow

In this lively presentation, Daryl Plummer highlighted the changing perspective around the way systems are built, deployed and used.

Daryl started by pointing out that when it comes to adopting a technology like SOA, you need to build a case for the business value. You also need to be aware that SOA is not something you choose to do, it’s something that…

Moderator:
Tony Baer (TB), principal, onStrategies; formerly an analyst with Datamonitor/Computerwire

Panelists:
Barry Vandevier (BV), CTO, Travelocity
Sandeep Gupta (SG), Vice President, Strategic Software Development, Equifax
Chris French (CF), Partner, Deloitte Consulting
Sam Paper (SP), Senior Vice President, Client Management and Credit Technology, Strategy and Service Orientation, Bank of America

TB: What is your strategy on .NET?

SP: We’re pleased with the responsiveness of ILOG in bringing .NET products to market.…

I was another fly-on-the-wall for the second analysts breakfast. This time round analysts from Gartner were on hand to answer questions around business process management (BPM), service-oriented architecture (SOA) and business rules management systems (BRMS) issues.

Analysts:
David McCoy (DM), managing vice president and Gartner Fellow
Daryl Plummer (DP), group vice president and Chief Gartner Fellow

Here’s a few of the questions I picked up on:

Question: Do you find that…