IBM ODM on Cloud Demonstration
Key Points
- IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) on Cloud is a collaborative, rule‑based SaaS that lets organizations capture, automate, and manage frequently occurring business decisions and share them across the IBM Cloud platform.
- The service is hosted on IBM SoftLayer’s global infrastructure (17 data centers) and provides secure HTTPS access for external applications to invoke decision services.
- Developers use the Eclipse‑based Rule Designer to model vocabularies, configure decision services, and then push them to the cloud, where business experts can update, test, simulate, and validate rules without needing developer involvement.
- ODM on Cloud includes built‑in decision‑governance features and three separate environments—development, test, and production—managed by a release manager who promotes versioned decision services through the lifecycle.
- The demo showcases a “fast loan” decision service that performs data validation, scoring, and eligibility checks, illustrating that the same classic rule‑based use cases (fraud detection, underwriting, pricing, loyalty, etc.) available on‑prem can be built and run on ODM on Cloud.
Full Transcript
# IBM ODM on Cloud Demonstration **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3qf_0vc70k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3qf_0vc70k) **Duration:** 00:28:05 ## Summary - IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) on Cloud is a collaborative, rule‑based SaaS that lets organizations capture, automate, and manage frequently occurring business decisions and share them across the IBM Cloud platform. - The service is hosted on IBM SoftLayer’s global infrastructure (17 data centers) and provides secure HTTPS access for external applications to invoke decision services. - Developers use the Eclipse‑based Rule Designer to model vocabularies, configure decision services, and then push them to the cloud, where business experts can update, test, simulate, and validate rules without needing developer involvement. - ODM on Cloud includes built‑in decision‑governance features and three separate environments—development, test, and production—managed by a release manager who promotes versioned decision services through the lifecycle. - The demo showcases a “fast loan” decision service that performs data validation, scoring, and eligibility checks, illustrating that the same classic rule‑based use cases (fraud detection, underwriting, pricing, loyalty, etc.) available on‑prem can be built and run on ODM on Cloud. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3qf_0vc70k&t=0s) **Intro to IBM ODM on Cloud** - An overview of IBM Operational Decision Manager on Cloud, explaining its SaaS, rule‑based architecture, developer workflow from Eclipse to deployment, and business‑user tools for managing, testing, and sharing decision services. ## Full Transcript
hello my name is l I'm a smarter process
offering manager at IBM today I'm going
to give you a demonstration of IBM
operational decision manager on
cloud before starting the demonstration
I want to give you a short introduction
of what uh IBM odm oncloud is first of
all IBM operational L manager oncloud is
a collaborative software as a Serv
that is RO based and the the aim of odm
oncloud is to help you to capture
automate and manage all your frequently
occurring business decision that are Ru
based then you will be able to share
them across the cloud IBM odm on cloud
is a Sofer service Cloud that is hosted
on the IBM Cloud platform based on soft
layer this means that this service is
available on the 17 different uh IBM
softlayer data center
worldwide the concept of operation of
odm oncloud is very simple everything
start from the rule designer is the
eclipse environment for developers that
have uh the responsibility of Designing
the decision service configuring the
decision service defining all the models
uh the vocabulary the business user will
use and the various deployment
configuration and then the service is
pushed to the cloud then everything will
happen from the
cloud so the business Expert in charge
of maintaining the business policies
will have access to all the rules they
they are able to update them view them
test them s do some simulation Define
their own testing and simulation suits
and uh validating all the change Odon
Cloud also provid some uh predefined
governance uh services with the decision
governance framework that comes out of
the box with the
service aium Cloud comes with three uh
different uh environments development
test and production as we will
see the release manager is in charge of
pushing the various versions of the
decisions depending on the updates and
in depending of the life cycle they are
in into one of these uh different um
environments we will see the three Dev
test and production environment in the
demonstration
finally uh the uh external application
will invoke this decision service
providing the the input data and then
getting in as a result the
decisions all the connections from
outside to the clouds are secured and
performed through https
with odm on cloud you can Define as many
uh different decisions as you were used
to do with uh the odm on Prime you can
do some fraud detection underwriting
claims eligibility pricing loyalty so
all the classical rules-based
decisions uh that you were used to
develop with the odm on Prem are also uh
available and and you can Al develop
similar uh decisions from IBM odm on
cloud in today's demonstration we are
going to see a simple fast loan uh
decision
service so from a fast loan web
application any customer are able to
provide their data to get uh a loan from
the the bank the fast loan decision
servic is hosted on odm on cloud and
provides different Services validation
scoring and then eligibility to the loan
the relas manager in our demonstration
will be responsible for updating the
business policies and and pushing them
into the various death test and prod
environments dep depending on where we
are in the update life
cycle so let's now move to the
demonstration so before having a look to
odm on clouds let's see this client
application so from this application any
customer can provide their data that
their name age all these data that the
rules will use to decide about the
validation about the scoring and the
eligibility to the loan behind the scene
we are going to use the Odon Cloud uh
invocation to the service from this
sample interface we can decide to invoke
the rules from the dev the test or the
production
environment as any https uh connection
so we have to provide the uh credential
so the username and the password to be
able to access uh the the the cloud
instance that is here uh located here in
that
URL so let's use uh with this data this
decision
service so here uh I have submitted the
data to the service and automatically uh
I see that my loan has been rejected I
can see some reasons so I can see the
score that has been computed by the
rules and one reason the de to income
was too high compared to the credit
score I got with my
data if I just change a value here for
example in increasing my yearly
income and invoke a new uh uh decision
here the result is different because now
I am eligible with my dep to income
ratio that is good for the optain
score so all the score and decisions are
managed behind the scene by the uh
business schules decision
service so let's see what's behind the
scene so let's first log in into Odon
Cloud so here I can provide my
credentials and then my
password and now I enter Odon Cloud so
this is the landing page of Odon Cloud
so as I've explained previously you can
see that odm cloud is composed of three
environments the development environment
in which you will see uh the rule
designer the decision uh Center business
console Enterprise consol that are the
two consoles that are designed for
business user to update manage uh their
business policies and the rule execution
uh server console that provides a
visibility on the dedicated execution
server instance that is uh available on
this development
environment then we have a test
environment where we will just have the
rule execution server console to manage
all the decisions that are deployed on
the test environment and finally the pro
prodction environment once again with
the rule execution server console
allowing me to see all the decision that
have been deployed in the production
environment so in the previous example
with the uh with the small demo that we
have seen we were executing the decision
from that environment the production
one
so any uh as I said in the introduction
U odm oncloud is a world
based service this means that here I'm
logged as a an administrator this means
that I can see all the administration
panel and have access to all the users
and privileges from the users that are
here in the in this instance I can
rapidly invite a new user just by here
setting
a an email and then automatically odm
oncloud will send an invitation email to
this user uh allowing him first to set
up his account his name and and password
and then finally access the uh the cloud
instance so from from this uh
uh from this interface so you can filter
here so you can see here my profile I'm
an administrator and here I
am uh my role is a release manager that
is the highest role uh with the highest
privileges that you can have in odm on
cloud so in just one click you can
change the the roles of the users uh and
that will give them access to some
specific functions and features of the
product or just block them for example
deploying the production environment is
something that is just allowed for
release managers as I am right
now let's come back now to the to the to
the decision service so as I said so
everything start from the rule designer
so from this environment you can
download the rule designer archive that
and and you will get the entire config
preconfigured Eclipse environment that
allows any developer to set up the
decision service before pushing it to
the cloud let's have a look to this
environment
rapidly so here we are into the eclipse
environment we are in the rule
perspective and we can see here our
decision service the first L service
demo with the eligibility
scoring uh and and validation rule set
that uh that that are composing here our
Global decision we can see here the rule
flow that uh orchestrate these various
uh uh rule uh rule
sets one important aspect of uh of uh a
decision service is the deployment
configurations so here we have defined
two uh configuration one that will allow
a a user to De deploy a non production
environment and here we can see all the
servers that are available on the C on
the cloud uh and that are non-
production environment so we can see the
one from the development environment and
one from the test
environment when you specify in the uh
rule designer your uh Cloud connection
specifying the URL your username and
your password automatically here all the
URLs for the various uh execution
environments are automatically
set we can see here the uh production
configuration once again with the
production environment predefined with
the correct
URL once defined you can synchronize
your decision service with the decision
Center just by clicking on this button
automatically all your decision service
will be pushed to your CL
instance from them any business users
and release manager are able to access
this decision service from the cloud so
let's come back to the
cloud and have a look to this decision
service so to do so I'm going to use
today the business console so the
business console is the uh web interface
that is spec specially designed for
business users allowing them to
collaborate exchange using the social
media style collaborations and and uh
update uh their decisions so here we can
see all the decisions that are already
deployed on on this
instance and I'm going to have a look to
the fast loan uh service that uh that
that compos today uh or today's
demonstration so there are two options
in odm oncloud you can uh either work
with the decision governance framework
where you will be completely guided end
to end in a governance way uh in a
governed way uh through uh to update
business decisions uh using spe
dedicated activities or use the branch
mode so let's use today's the branch
mode and have a look to all the um rules
and decisions that are governing our
today's
demonstration so here we can see once
again all the rules that have been
uh defined and that you can update so we
can see for example here a decision
table so the decision table that will
initialize the score depending on uh the
state of the residence of the uh uh
customer and and of
the of the borrower and the the fact the
the flag that tells us if the the
request comes from an existing customer
of the bank or not depending on these uh
parameters we will initialize the score
accordingly so here we have seen a
decision table you can also uh Define uh
a decision
using textual uh rules so here we can
see one of the of this rule is the
amount of the loan is more than 500,000
and the borrower is is is an is not an
existing customer then we will add a
message to the
loan and and then we will reject the
loan directly so here we are in an
eligibility
room as I said an important aspect of uh
of odm on on cloud and on the business
console is the ability for business user
to Define to Define uh simulation Suite
here from that environment so here we
have some predefined
metrics some kpis that the the the user
have have have have defined some data
that they want to use for the simulation
they can also Define the the the the way
they want the report to be displayed and
all these different item will Define
what we call a
simulation so the simulation will
execute all the rules in the current
status and uh uh against all the data
that are defined here in the in the data
file and we'll compute some predefined
kpi so let's start a
simulation here we can see the status so
the simulation is
ongoing and now the simulation is done
let's have a look to the report as it
has been defined by business
user so we can see here in that in that
report first that uh 28 loans have been
approved five of them have been
rejected among these five rejected loans
four were existing
customers here we can see uh different
ways for uh representing uh the kpis so
some using some P shots so here we can
see that 15% of the uh incoming uh
requests were
rejected um we can see that most of the
uh of the reje rejection were for
existing
customers uh and the approval ratio per
state so here all the data that we can
and can display and kpi that we can
display here are completely defined from
this interface by business
users so we can see that the uh the
number of rejected customer is is is
very high so this is risky for for the
insurance because the more of your
customer you will reject the more more
likely they will be to go to another
bank so in order to reduce this uh this
attrition the business user decide to
try to solve this issue or reduce the
risk by creating a new rule so let's see
how he can do that in odm on cloud so
the first thing is to come to the rule
and here in the scoring we will increase
the score for existing customer so here
we have a bonus rule set in this bonus
rule set we are going to to create a new
rule let's call it um
existing
customers and we are going to use the
um uh int rule editor that is a
contextual poting click editor with
automatic completion that allows me to
uh find my rotes very easily so if the
borrower and then automatically I've got
some automatic comp completion is an is
an existing
customer then I'm going to increase the
score of the borrower by 200
points and then I'm going to document
this uh this rule by adding a a
message so we are going to call message
and and
existing customer
bonus and then we are going to set this
message to the loan here we are so the
rule isi is is defined I have no more
errors
here I can save the rule and create a
new version of that
rule the rule is not yet
deployed but we can
already measure the impact of that rule
so what we are going to do here is to
just come back into the simulation and
run the exact same simulation as the
previous one using the same
data so a new report is being
generated and we are going to see the
impact of that new
rule so here's the so the new report is
here and what I I I can do is compare
side by side this new report with the
previous one so that I can really see
the impact of my new policy and here I
can see that the previous number of
existing customer was four and now is it
is just three and here we have also uh
reduce the number of existing customers
that were
rejected so as a business user what I
will say is this rule does its job and
it reduce the number of rejected uh
existing customers so the next step for
me is to make sure that this rule does
not break the Integrity of of of my
system to do so so I'm going to use a
test stre that also has been defined
here from the business console and run
this uh this test Suite on my new rules
so a test Su consist in defining some
some uh scenarios and check the the
result for each scenarios if one result
with the rules is not matching the
expected conditions the expected results
then we will get some
errors so let's run the test Suite
here so behind the scene so we are
executing all the the the rules
including the new one and we can see the
the test reports so all the tests are
successful this means that the new rules
that I've created is not breaking the
the the Integrity of my system for
example here uh the for this scenario
the loan approach stue was supposed to
be true and the result is
true the here the credit score of the
borrower for that scenario was supposed
to be G greater greater than 400 it has
been seven uh
170 so all the scenarios and all the
condition are match for all in all cases
so 100% of suced of success so this
means that okay my new rule does not
break my Integrity uh the Integrity of
the system and now I can deploy it for
further
test to do that I am a release manager
so I have the ability to deploy on the
the vales environment so here we can see
the two uh deployment configuration that
we have defined in the rule designer and
deploy in one of these environments so
the first thing I'm going to do is
Deploy on the test
environment so let's do
this so now the deployment is ongoing
and it's done from my cloud uh instance
so I can come to the test environment
and start the uh rule EX server console
and check that my decision has been
correctly uh deployed so here I can see
my life Cloud deployment for my decision
service and here see a new version of my
fast Lo service Ru set that I that I
have just undeployed right now so my
service my new decision service is
deployed on the test environment so if I
come back to my uh testing interface
what I can do now is using the test
environment
and start a new uh loan
evaluation and here I can see that no my
my loan has been accepted and the result
the score is is not 290 and we can see
that my existing customer bonus rule has
been fired for that
case if I come back to the production
environment we ex we execute the exact
same case we are still
rejected just because we have not yet
deployed on production so odm on clouds
allows you to really run and test some
and do some validation and testing
without impacting your production
environment so now what I can see here
in this pre-production test is that my
new decision service works well with my
client application so the next step for
me is to deploy the rule uh into the uh
production
environment so let's do
that using this specific uh deployment
configuration once again I am a release
manager so I am entitled to to deploy on
that environment once again from the uh
Cloud interface so I can have a look to
the rule execution server in
production and see all my rules that
have been uh rule rule applications that
have been deployed and once again the
new version of my decision service that
has been deployed in
production here I am still using the uh
the application in production mode it is
still running I'm re-executing again the
the exact same case and now I'm
allowed allowed to to get the loan and
and the uh once again I can see the
existing customer bonus rule that has
been fir so this means that you can
deploy new business policies and update
your application or business processes
with odm oncloud without interrupting
the service itself so it brings you a a
great visibility so in this
demonstration so we have been able to
see odm oncloud in action we have been
able to see how business uh users can
update uh rules run some testing
simulation measures the impact of the
changes before uh uh putting them into
production we have seen the the various
uh life cycle for the rul starting from
the dev environment uh the test
environment and then the production
environment and we Al we have also been
able to see how easy it is in odm on
cloud to manage roles and assign new uh
participant and invite new participant
to the cloud
instance so to conclude this uh this
presentation let me give you some uh
some some takeaways
so here are some top the top 10 values
that you can get from odm oncloud so
with odm on cloud you benefit from
Decades of Investments and Innovation
from IBM on the business rul management
system
domain the service is provisioned in
less than 48 hours so you are able to
create your first decision very
rapidly the service is as I said fully
managed by IBM meaning that you will not
require any it investment to operate it
so it's monthly subscription model gives
you a flexibility uh and a visibility on
on your
Investments Aon Cloud being a software
as a service you will not need servers
to run it so it reduces capex uh capital
expenditure for your
organization the user management is
self-service as we have seen it does not
require any contact to IBM to uh invite
new uh participant and assign them with
rols you can do that by
yourself any odm oncloud instance comes
as we have seen with the three death
test and production environments making
the decision update cycle
straightforward the service is secured
and kept secured by
IBM the odm version are always up to
date on this service and IBM will push
the new features on the regular basis on
on on the cloud so on odm on cloud helps
you to control your investment by
cutting done license cost due to the
hardware investment people required to
maintain and operate the system install
it configure it update it all these task
are fully perform for you by IBM with
security so some next steps so the first
thing you can do uh is to learn more
about odm on cloud visiting the odm dev
Center you have here the URL or also
visiting the odm product page on ibm.com
site
then you can evaluate uh IBM operational
manager on cloud uh signing up for uh
two week free trial uh version from
where you will have a full access to the
product you have here the link to
request your trial version and finally
we can do some on-site
Workshop uh on uh with your business
users and it stakeholders and then
during this Workshop we will evaluate
the applicability of odm on Cloud for
you
project thank you for your attention and
have a nice day