Preface for the 2nd International Workshop on Business Process Management in the Cloud (BPMC)

Cloud computing is a paradigm for the on-demand delivery of infrastructure, platform, or software as a service. Cloud computing enables network access to a shared pool of configurable computing and storage resources as well as applications which can be tailored to the consumer’s needs. Cloud resources can be rapidly provisioned and released, and are billed based on actual use, thus reducing up-front investment costs. Not only can individual services be hosted on virtual infrastructures but also complete process platforms. Further, besides benefits to run-time Business Process Management (BPM), cloud-based services can enable collaboration between geographically dispersed teams during design-time and assist the design process in general – amongst others, process modelling as a service removes the need for installation of software, and is thus more attractive for the occasional user. A cloud-based architecture for BPM may provide important benefits: