BPaaS Terminology #

This page defines BPaaS terminology. In particular, it defines the meaning of BPaaS, and related to it, a cloud-based business process management system. The definitions make heavy use of definitions from the area of cloud computing as well as business processes. 

BPaaS #

The basic assumption of BPaaS is that a provider offers the capability to the consumer to map and execute a business process defined in standardized models with the support of additional respective descriptions, models and potentially human intervention on top of a SaaS, PaaS or IaaS infrastructures.

Gartner defines Business process as a service (BPaaS) as the delivery of business process services that are sourced from the cloud and constructed for multitenancy. Services are often automated, and where human process actors are required, there is no overly dedicated labor pool per client. The pricing models are consumption-based or subscription-based commercial terms. As a cloud service, a BPaaS is accessed via Internet-based technologies.

More precisely, Business Process as a Service (BPaaS) represents an Internet-based service that offers a dedicated Business Process in a cloud-based manner. Tenant representatives can buy this service for their tenants and provide it to its users (e.g., employees). Besides the pricing model and the multi-tenancy, the cloud-like properties of BPaaS include the capability to scale with the number of tenants and users. 

BPMSaaS #

Business Process Management as a Service provides a cloud-based solution through which users can create and manage custom Business Processes. Following the NIST definition of cloud, BPMaaS resides somewhere in-between SaaS and PaaS, as it basically provides a fixed software service, but also offers hooks for introducing own logic.