Introduction
This cloud platform is a comprehensive decision automation service for capturing, automating, and governing rule-based business decisions.
Both technical and business users can use its components to create solutions for key operations such as authorizing loans, applying promotions, detecting cross-sell opportunities, and processing insurance. You can implement decisions immediately to keep your applications continuously up to date and aligned with the changing business objectives of your organization.
Your cloud tenant is ready to use when you log in to it for the first time. You get a dedicated version of Operational Decision Manager that is set up, configured, and provisioned for you. You have immediate access to tools for designing, developing, and deploying business rule applications.
Collaborative development
As the following diagram shows, you capture the policies of your organization in business rules through a collaborative service that supports developers, analysts, and business users.
You start by creating the business rules in Rule Designer, an Eclipse-based component, and then further develop and maintain the rules in an online platform that supports both business and technical users. Governance features control user access and impose a workflow to ensure the proper development of your rules. When your rules are ready, you deploy them to an execution server for use with client applications.
Two versions
You can get the full version or Express®. The full version gives you three environments – development, test and production – for a complete rule lifecycle solution. The Express version has one environment that includes many of the features in the full version. You can add a test or production environment to an Express tenant, but you must get the full version to use all three environments together. Whichever version you use, you can obtain additional execution servers for running your rule applications.
Maintained by IBM
IBM® does all the maintenance. It provides regular upgrades to ensure that you get the latest features, and it performs migration tasks to keep your data in sync with the platform. If you need an additional environment or execution server, IBM adds it for you.