The Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted a lot of attention in recent years. As IoT devices are equipped with sensors, actuators, software and various network interfaces, data can be gathered from the physical environment and be exchanged over the network. In this context, sensors are used to capture data from the physical world (e.g., air quality, humidity, or temperature), whereas actuators transform electrical signals into mechanical motion (e.g., rotate or translate). Business Process Management (BPM), in turn, deals with the modeling, execution, monitoring and analysis of business processes. Incorporating IoT capabilities into BPM systems, therefore, offers promising perspectives for bridging the gap between the digital and the physical world as well as for automating and optimizing real-world aware business processes based on IoT data.
Providing a holistic support for the modeling, execution, monitoring, and logging of IoT-driven processes, however, constitutes a challenge. Existing approaches are either unable to fully meet IoT characteristics or they do not provide holistic support for IoT-driven processes. This talk covers technologies, concepts, and methods for modeling, executing, monitoring, and logging IoT-driven business processes. The challenges to be tackled in this context are discussed, and a solution approach – the Business Process Modeling and Notation Extension for Internet of Things (BPMNE4IoT) framework – is introduced, which offers both advanced concepts and an implementation enabling a holistic support. Finally, insights from evaluations of the framework are presented.