Nokia Research Center demonstrates Mobile Process Engine at EuroShop 2008(23rd to 27th February) in joint collaboration with UPM Kymmene and IBM

Mobile Process Engine is first of its kind attempt to utilize the business process standards to enable mobile services in the mobile computing platform. This research exploration carried out in Nokia Research Center (NRC) focuses to utilize the full capabilities of the smart mobile computing devices to enable them to truly participate as equal participants in business processes. This demonstration validates on how mobile computing devices can run existing traditional business process technologies from a mobile device over mobile infrastructure. Mobile Process Engine provides a set of Mobile Web Services interfaces to access the device capabilities. There capabilities can be composed into a business process application using declarative process description and user interaction logic. The process applications thus developed can utilize the service interfaces to invoke local applications and as well as utilize the communication and transportation channels to communicate with processes running outside the device enabling inter-process communication deployed in traditional enterprise systems.

The Figure above depicts the mobile process application platform. The process application consists of a process logic document (such as: WS-BPEL) bundled with a set of web pages (standard xHTML pages with JavaScript for rich user interfaces) which is deployed into the process repository. The user interacts with the business process application using the standard mobile messaging application user interface. This integrated user interface provides a seamless and unified communication interface to business processes, enabling better user experience when dealing with business processes.

Industry Case Study Mobile wireless interface to manage price information over distributed electronic labels in retail stores.

Nokia Research Center in a joint collaboration with UPM Kymmene and IBM has explored the use of process oriented system in the retail industry where the pricing of the products on retail shelves need to be managed on a regular basis. At EuroShop 2008 we are going to demonstrate industry's first mobile business process system which helps to manage the electronic price data and information in retail store environments. This demonstrator utilizes state of the art technologies such as: Nokia's Mobile Business Process Workflow Engine and Mobile Web Services over Mobile Web Server, UPM's Ella Electronic Labels and IBM's WebSphere Business Process Solution.

This demonstrator at EuroShop 2008 will be available at UPM Kymmene's stand so come by the booth to discuss with us if you are at EuroShop 2008 or contact us for collaboration opportunities.

The Figure depicts the industry case study where the retail store workers are requesting change in the price due to competitor slashing prices of similar product. The price change request is received by the manager in case the change amount requires approval. On approval all the displays will bear the new prices automatically over wirelessly avoiding a manual process of updating the electronic labels and hence contributing instantly to productivity gains in retail markets.

Please note: This is a research pilot developed in order to validate the need for Mobile Business Process Technology in Nokia Research. We are at the moment validating with research partners the business potential for this technology and are open for research collaboration to pilot the technology. If you have any specific queries direct them to the following email address: suresh.chande@nokia.com

For more information visit our project web pages: http://research.nokia.com/projects/mobile_business_processes Or contact us by email: Nokia Research Center: Suresh Chande / Lasse Pajunen

UPM Kymmene: Jenni Virnes

IBM: Petri Ahveninen