As you're probably all aware by now, another BPM pure play got swept up with Progress' announcement yesterday of their purchase of Savvion for approx. $49 million.
And yes, it was predicted right here on ebizQ's BPM Forum by Brian Reale of ProcessMaker, who, when asked about IBM buying Lombardi, responded: Think of IBM's announcement as the opening of a flood gate. It is going to be the first of many acquisition announcements in 2010 in the BPM space.
Some of the responses around the blogosphere:
Tony Baer of OnStrategies (and frequent ebizQ contrib.) declared it to be the death knell of the BPM pure play, saying: Just weeks after IBM's announcement to snap up Lombardi just before Christmas, Progress responds with agreement to put Savvion out of its misery? In such a small space that is undergoing active consolidation, it is hard not to know who's in play. Nonetheless, Progress's acquisition confirms that BPM's pure play days are numbered, if you expect executable BPM.
Dana Gardner on ZDNet said: The combination of Savvion BPM and Progress CEP help bring the vision of operational responsiveness, Progress's value theme of late, out from the developer and IT engineer purview (where it will be even stronger) and gets it far closer to the actual business outcomes movers and shakers. The Savvion buy also nudges Progress closer to an integrated business intelligence (BI) capability.
Sandy Kemsley over at Enterprise Irregulars stated: One huge difference being that Progress doesn't already have a BPM product in their lineup, whereas IBM has two. Of the three mid-range BPMS-only vendors that I would most commonly name - Appian, Lombardi and Savvion - that's two out of the three announcing acquisition in less than a month...If the economic climate were different, these would be IPOs that we'd be seeing rather than acquisitions.
Over on Twitter most comments referenced BPM being in an acquisition race:
BPMNetwork said: Progress Scoops Up Savvion in BPM Race
NearshoreZagada said: The march of Progress Software: Savvion provides latest entry in BPM consolidation parade
johnrrymer said: Progress Software buying Savvion. Fills BPM hole in product line; Progress will drive new view of "event-driven BPM" with Apama in the mix.
So altogether, pretty much uniformly positive responses...or maybe, with a sea trend this large, we've all just learned to stop fighting the surf!
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