The BPM war – Goliath takes on David
Post BEA acquisition, Oracle combined its own evolving BPEL Process Manager and established BEA Aqualogic BPM under Oracle BPM Suite. While Oracle has both the products can run on a single engine, there are separate process modelers and designer modules for Oracle BPEL and BEA ALBPM. However, Oracle could manage interaction between ALBPM and BPEL Process Manager in a short span. Oracle mentioned during Oracle Open World 2008 that the 11g release in 2009 will present unified BPM offering. Once offered, it will be difficult for competition to match the strength of BPM offerings available on a single platform. I still give big thumbs up for the swiftness shown by Oracle!
IBM has beaten Oracle in its own game. Two prominent niche players - ILOG and FileNet were acquired in a span of two years. IBM has WebSphere Process Server that has business processing capabilities. It used to partner with ILOG to cater customers requiring anything in addition to the vanilla rules requirements. So Ilog acquisition will help IBM to add rules engine to Web-Sphere Process Server. On the other hand FileNet acquisition has helped improve its document process management offerings. But all the smart thinking has been let down by the product team who have taken a long time to offer a common BPM platform to the customers. The decision was excellent, but it remains to be seen if it is executed properly.
Coming to Microsoft, we are yet to see any seriousness as far as BPM is concerned. The nearest it has come to BPM is by offering Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). WF is Microsoft's technology platform for creating workflows. However Microsoft has not shown any inclination to bring WF and BizTalk together in next set of releases as well. It still expects its Business Process Alliance partners to create solutions that enhance BPM enablement on Microsoft platform. I fear that soon SI partners, customers and analysts will stop giving a thought to Microsoft while talking BPM!
SAP had ARIS to compliment BPM approach. Last year, SAP acquired Yasu Technologies to enhance its BPM offering with business rules infrastructure. The vanilla BPM platform was showcased during SAPPHIRE 2008. SAP isn’t clearly competing in the BPM space – but BPM vendors will definitely encounter stiff competition in selling their product to SAP customers.
Large players joining the bandwagon will continue pushing the prices down. We have already seen BEA customers benefitting from Oracle’s slashing of maintenance charges. On the other hand SAP customers need not go shopping for BPM licenses—they might get BPM offerings as a part of ERP software! With uncertain economic conditions looming, niche BPM players will take the path of innovation to tackle the threat of the package economies. A pure play BPM vendor, Fujitsu has upped the ante by promoting the usage of XBRL thereby positioning it as a de facto standard in the world of financial reporting. At the same time, Savvion and Pegasystems have already launched solutions targeting specific verticals, whereas many players (Lombardi, Appian, Cordys, etc) have stepped in with on-demand BPM offerings.
Ladies and Gentlemen, BPM space is witnessing a revolution! Aren’t we blessed to witness it? Your opinions are welcome…
Comments
Hey Piyush,
I don't think that you are aware of the Market king "Blaze Advisor" from fair Isaac. I dont see the name here.. Even WWF is still so far from Blaze Advisor.
Posted by: Mahesh Sase | February 3, 2009 5:06 AM
@Mahesh, Blaze Advisor is indeed a market leader - but only in the space of Business Rules Management.
But the scope of above analysis is limited to big four 'package economies' - SAP, Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. I do agree that WWF is still a long way to go before it becomes a force to reckon with in the BPM/BRMS space.
Posted by: Piyush Swain | February 4, 2009 9:34 AM
Please shed some light on BPM Markets in SMB's.
Posted by: Ashwani Tyagi | April 15, 2009 6:57 AM